Have unfair dismissal claims been on the rise since the recession?

The recession in the UK has resulted in thousands of job losses and massive increases in unemployment. As a result of the dismissals made and the pressures on employees and businesses, there has been a linked rise in unfair dismissal claims, of around 29% on previous years.

Unfair dismissal can be claimed where an employer has dismissed an employee for an automatically unfair reason, or where there has been a dismissal for a potentially fair reason, but the dismissal has been handled in an unfair way. A dismissal can occur in the obvious way, where an employer dismisses an employee, but can also occur where an employer doesn’t renew a fixed term contract, or where an employer commits a fundamental breach of contract and the employee treats themselves as being dismissed. Talk to an employment solicitor if you are unsure whether a dismissal has occurred.

The largest rise in unfair dismissal claims has been in relation to dismissals is where the potentially fair reason used was redundancy. Employment law provides employees with a range of redundancy rights. An employer should follow certain procedures in order to show that the redundancy and the selection process is fair, in order to respect an employee’s redundancy rights. As an employer, if you are considering making redundancies, then you should consult an employment solicitor to help you to determine a fair selection process and thereby avoid costly unfair dismissal claims for breach of redundancy rights. This is especially important in the case of collective redundancies, as more redundancy rights apply.

The process you need to use to make redundancies varies depending on how many people you are making redundant. In all cases you need to establish a pool of employees that will be made redundant, you also need to establish redundancy selection criteria. You should use an employment solicitor to help you determine the criteria to be used; the criteria might include skills, standard of work, attendance and so on.

Certain criteria will result in your dismissal being automatically unfair and an employee will be able to bring a claim without you being able to justify your criteria. Dismissals that are automatically unfair include for reasons of trade union membership and for pregnancy. You should always consult employees in a redundancy situation, your failure to do so can result in the dismissal being unfair.