06 Sep Redundancy Cases

Despite current skills shortages and employment figures being close to full employment, redundancy related complaints still arise and two recent decision by the Labour Court and WRC, are an useful reminder for the need to apply correct and fair selection criteria and processes, when making employees redundant.

Firstly, in the case of CH Marine Limited and O’Connor, the Labour Court found that the unilateral relocation of an employee’s role to Cork from Bandon after a period of sick leave and without consultation, was not reasonable and would have necessitated an excessive additional daily commute. The Court determined that the employee was entitled to resign and constructively dismiss himself, and was entitled to a statutory redundancy payment.

In the second case, the Adjudication Officer awarded €15,000 after determining that an employee’s performance had been part of the decision making process around the redundancy, which should never be the case (ADJ 00012472).

Lessons

Redundancies must always be about roles and not personal to an individual’s performance, and where an alternative position or location is available as an alternative to the redundancy , it must be reasonable.