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Hello,
I am helping my father in law to build up the case against employee for employment tribunal.
Quick brief what happened:
Employer business (more than 4000 employers) is in hospitality and they have been affected by Covid as the bookings reduced drastically.
Last summer they have sent out the letter asking most employees on site to move to zero hours contract including my father in law working full time.
Very short period was given to make up decision to accept the move (10 days) and the move would have happened within 30 days.
There was no public consultation nor it was explained on what it means to employees at the time (i.e. holidays, pensions, term of employment etc).
Most of the colleagues have accepted the terms. I believe this happened due to the pressure of time and lack of consultation and language barrier (most employees paid minimum wage and their first language is not English).
Father in law (10 year service in company with not a single disciplinary or grievance) have not accepted the change in contract and asked to look into alternative options. There were few letters were sent at the time including a letter informing termination of contract with notice and reemployment straight away with new terms of contract by employer.
Eventually there was an appeal meeting held and the outcome was still the same accept conditions or we will terminate contract. We even asked them to consider reducing the contract hours as an alternative but they have not accepted.
When asked whether there will be redundancy pay they claimed that it was not redundancy situation.
The contract was terminated by them and we have put the early conciliation with ACAS which did not produce any agreement as they were claiming that it was not redundancy situation. When we spoke to ACAS they said that the change in contract is substantial and itself can be constituted as redundancy as there are no guaranteed hours in the future.
We have submitted claim to employment tribunal and will have hearing later this year. Currently in the stage of drafting witness statements.
I would like to gain your opinions on whether employer can still hold some grounds in employment tribunal and also what we should consider as a point of defence.
Prompt reply appreciated.
Thank you.
I am helping my father in law to build up the case against employee for employment tribunal.
Quick brief what happened:
Employer business (more than 4000 employers) is in hospitality and they have been affected by Covid as the bookings reduced drastically.
Last summer they have sent out the letter asking most employees on site to move to zero hours contract including my father in law working full time.
Very short period was given to make up decision to accept the move (10 days) and the move would have happened within 30 days.
There was no public consultation nor it was explained on what it means to employees at the time (i.e. holidays, pensions, term of employment etc).
Most of the colleagues have accepted the terms. I believe this happened due to the pressure of time and lack of consultation and language barrier (most employees paid minimum wage and their first language is not English).
Father in law (10 year service in company with not a single disciplinary or grievance) have not accepted the change in contract and asked to look into alternative options. There were few letters were sent at the time including a letter informing termination of contract with notice and reemployment straight away with new terms of contract by employer.
Eventually there was an appeal meeting held and the outcome was still the same accept conditions or we will terminate contract. We even asked them to consider reducing the contract hours as an alternative but they have not accepted.
When asked whether there will be redundancy pay they claimed that it was not redundancy situation.
The contract was terminated by them and we have put the early conciliation with ACAS which did not produce any agreement as they were claiming that it was not redundancy situation. When we spoke to ACAS they said that the change in contract is substantial and itself can be constituted as redundancy as there are no guaranteed hours in the future.
We have submitted claim to employment tribunal and will have hearing later this year. Currently in the stage of drafting witness statements.
I would like to gain your opinions on whether employer can still hold some grounds in employment tribunal and also what we should consider as a point of defence.
Prompt reply appreciated.
Thank you.
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