Claimant v Electro-Mechanical Assembly Ltd — 2020

The claimant brought a single unfair dismissal claim arising from his redundancy dismissal. He accepted that there was a redundancy situation and that he had been dismissed by reason of redundancy. His case was that he should have been scored higher in the selection exercise and that he had been unfairly selected, not that the redundancy itself was not genuine.

The tribunal found that the respondent was a small manufacturing business and that the production operators all did the same job, albeit with different practical strengths. When the respondent identified a need to reduce headcount, staff were told about the downturn in business, asked for cost-saving ideas, and advised that compulsory redundancies might follow. A selection matrix was then devised using three criteria: skills, knowledge and contribution. Two managers, Mrs Hunter and Mr McDonald, independently scored each operator using their direct knowledge, training and staff records.

On the tribunal’s findings, the claimant had the lowest average score. The tribunal accepted that he was a good operator on the machine he regularly used, but found that he had comparatively narrower knowledge and skill across the wider production role and contributed less than others to the broader work of the team. He was given a detailed explanation of the scoring and met both assessors on 24 February 2020. He signed a document confirming that he understood the process and was happy with the answer given, and he did not then challenge the scores or suggest that other staff had been unfairly treated.

Applying section 98 ERA 1996 and the redundancy authorities it cited, including Williams v Compair Maxam Ltd, Buchanan v Tilcon Ltd, Eaton Ltd v King, Taylor v BICC Brand Rex Ltd and Polkey v AE Dayton Services Ltd, the tribunal concluded that the selection criteria were reasonable, the process was fair, and the respondent acted reasonably in selecting the claimant. The tribunal therefore held that the dismissal was fair and the unfair dismissal claim failed. The claimant had left on 26 March 2020 to start another job, received pay to that date and a statutory redundancy payment, and later secured another role and benefits, but no compensation award arose because the claim was dismissed.