I’ve recently started re-reading one of my all-time favourite books, A Man in Love (My Struggle Book 2) by Karl Ove Knausgard. It may sound like a romantic book but, in fact, it is brutal. No other word can reflect and sum up this book in its lengthy entirety: brutal. Basically, the book acts as…
Intelligent Hand Dryers, a Company based in Sheffield specialising in, well, Hand Dryers, has recently introduced a ban on its employees using single use plastic including plastic water bottles, sandwich wrappers with plastic ‘windows’, and disposable coffee cups with plastic linings, in order to reduce its environmental impact.
The owner of the Company, Andrew Cameron, has made the above a disciplinary offence and stated that if employees receive three warnings and continue to ignore this policy, they could be dismissed. The environmental benefits, if more businesses were to impose such policies, are obvious however is it fair to effectively make this a condition of employment? Surely the choice of an employee to buy a sandwich from a well-known supermarket at lunch time does not hinder their ability to perform their role?
It’s fair to say that Ryanair aren’t strangers to controversy. Whether it be their pricing strategy, public statements or otherwise, they seem to attract publicity for many reasons, whether good or bad.
Given their nature for publicity, it was perhaps predictable that the media (and social media) would seemingly target Ryanair for dismissing six staff members photographed sleeping on the floor of a crewroom in a Spanish airport. Indeed, on the face of it, it seems bizarre to punish staff who were ‘forced’ to sleep on the floor.
However, as with most situations, there is more to the story than the headline would suggest and, dig a bit deeper, and it seems that Ryanair may actually have had legal grounds for dismissing the six staff members for Gross Misconduct based on the publicised facts.
Now, as a starting point, naturally, you can’t dismiss staff for sleeping on a floor. That would be ludicrous and completely unfair. But, in this case, that isn’t why Ryanair dismissed their staff members.
So, why did Ryanair sack them? What’s the big difference? Well, put simply, Ryanair believe that the staff members ‘staged’ the photograph and did so with a view to damaging their reputation. And, whilst people are perhaps inclined to automatically distrust the public statements of big companies in situations like this (and, instead, support the ‘underdog’), it appears that Ryanair has a point.
How can anyone judge this? Well, put simply, because Ryanair published a CCTV video online showing the staff standing or sitting around and then appearing to agree to the taking of a photograph. All the staff members then move over and arrange themselves in a close formation on the floor before an individual takes a photograph of them lying on the floor (which they weren’t doing before).
I regularly get asked: “how far does employment law go?” It seems an odd question to ask but I understand that most employers simply mean: “can you investigate nearly every type of poor behaviour” to which my answer is normally “yes!”
There has been a widely reported news story this week that largely explains my usual response. Namely, this concerns the story of a van driver who was immediately dismissed for driving through puddles and intentionally soaking pedestrians in Ottawa, Canada.
As with many situations involving professional drivers, the misconduct was caught via the dashcam of another vehicle. In this case, the vehicle in front had a ‘bootcam’ recording events behind the vehicle which recorded a 40 second clip of the van driver in question intentionally swerving into large puddles (which he could have easily and safely avoided) in order to soak three pedestrians in a row. As evidence goes, there is practically no other reasonable interpretation for the video (which remains available online). Naturally, the video was quickly viewed by nearly 1 million people and the matter was also referred to the Canadian Police. The employer concerned quickly announced that the individual had been dismissed and, in turn, the Police praised the employer for acting decisively and announced that they wouldn’t take any further action further to the loss of employment.
Now, obviously, the above-mentioned events occurred in Canada, so the real question is whether the same thing would happen over here, particularly given that employment law rights are viewed as being more favourable to employees on this side of the pond.
Golf club chit chat and generally bad behaviour has frequently resulted in employment tribunal claims. It has often been the case that sometimes well meaning but misguided committee members have caused a great deal of trouble by failing to apply correct employment practices. Cases include Gorleston Golf Club, Nizels Golf Club and Irvine Ravenspark Golf Club, plus…
In order to establish a claim for constructive dismissal, an employee has to show that he or she resigned in response to a fundamental breach of contract by the employer – and must do so promptly, to avoid being regarded as having waived that breach. In Logan v Celyn House Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal…
Nejjary v Aramark Ltd is a reminder that a tribunal is only entitled to take into account the reasons given by an employer when deciding whether a dismissal is within the reasonable range of responses to misconduct, and should not take into account other matters disregarded by the employer. In this case a hospitality manager…