Yvonne Gregory v Robert Davies John West Limited — 2021

Yvonne Gregory worked for Robert Davies John West Limited from 6 April 2004 as a part-time book-keeper/administrator and company secretary. She resigned on 10 July 2018 after lodging a grievance in May 2018 and waiting for a response. The tribunal considered a long list of alleged breaches spanning 2012 to 2018, including hours, pay, passwords, holiday arrangements, outsourcing payroll, salary information, bank access, sickness pay, and changes to duties.

Most of the individual allegations were rejected. The tribunal found that it was open to the respondent not to offer the claimant a full-time role in 2012, to decline the pay rise she sought in March 2015, to ask her for passwords and access codes, to tighten holiday carry-over rules, to outsource payroll and pensions, to withhold individual salary details, to exclude her from the Santander account, to pay her contractual sick pay, to require attendance at the team-building day, and to reduce some of her duties. The tribunal also held that the respondent was entitled to reject the claimant's settlement proposal in April 2018 and to remind her that she could raise a grievance.

The tribunal did, however, accept that some conduct was problematic when viewed together. It found that Bob Davies' March 2015 outburst, the January 2016 email replying simply 'NO', the April 2016 reference to colleagues having complained that she was rude without giving particulars, and Kevin Davies' failure to reply to her email about discussing her role were the matters that cumulatively amounted to a breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence. It also found that the grievance handling could have been better, but that the respondent was addressing the grievance and had not breached the claimant's right to seek redress.

Applying the Kaur and Williams approach, the tribunal held that the claimant's immediate trigger for resignation was the unresolved grievance, but that grievance handling was not itself a repudiatory breach. The decisive point was affirmation: after the conduct found capable of breaching trust and confidence, the claimant remained in work for about 15 or 16 months before resigning. For that reason she was not constructively dismissed, and her unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal complaints also failed. No compensation award was made.