Member Ms V Lockhart Tribunal Member Mr R Dearle Mr M Armstrong v Respondent — 2021

The claimant was employed as a scaffolder from 7 August 2010 and, by the time of the events in question, had been working on the Dunlin platform as a long-term ad hoc member of staff. In 2019 he joined the safety committee and began raising concerns about diesel fumes in the living quarters. The tribunal found that his removal from the Dunlin was because he raised those health and safety concerns, and that the later suggestion that he had told a fellow passenger on 14 March 2020 that his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 was not the real reason for his removal.

The tribunal held that the dismissal was automatically unfair under s.100(1)(a) ERA 1996. It found that Fairfield and then the respondent had accepted an allegation that the claimant described as unreasonable and had not properly investigated it. The tribunal also found that the respondent did not genuinely search for alternative employment for him, did not properly challenge the client's NRB decision, and placed him into short-term work on the Sereco Bruce platform even though that was already a dead end because scaffolders there had either been made redundant or were already on notice of redundancy. It also found that there was ongoing work on the Rosetti platform and that the respondent gave no good reason for not placing the claimant there.

In the alternative, the tribunal held that the dismissal was unfair under s.98 ERA 1996 because the respondent had not shown a redundancy situation or a substantial other reason that justified dismissal on the evidence it heard. It ordered reinstatement. On remedy, the tribunal awarded a compensatory award of £16,098.98 made up of loss of sick pay of £6,352.83, loss of wages of £4,746.06, and loss of bonus of £5,000. It also ordered ongoing net weekly loss of £215.73 until reinstatement. The schedule of loss recorded a basic award of £8,070.00, but that was offset by a redundancy payment of £8,070.00, so no basic award formed part of the award. The recoupment appendix recorded the prescribed element as £16,098.89.