Employment Law in Practice, Case Study

1. Advise Ricky on his options (if any)

The General Manager, Sean, believed that if Ricky was unable to carry out all the work in his contract he could no longer work in the warehouse. Given this, Ricky terminated his contract of employment due to the conduct of his General Manager. This is known as constructive dismissal under the unfair dismissals legislation (The Unfair Dismissals Act 1977-2007). It would be seen as reasonable for Ricky to take a claim of constructive dismissal under this act.

In order to ground constructive dismissal the conduct of the employer must go to the root of the relationship between the employer (Sean) and the employee (Ricky). In the circumstances of constructive dismissal the onus is on the employee to prove that their resignation could be reasonably viewed as dismissal.

As Ricky had twelve months of continuous service with Trucks Warehouse Ltd he is entitled to make a claim of Constructive Dismissal to the EAT (Employers Appeal Tribunal). However Ricky has only six months from the date of his termination of employment to make this appeal.

Constructive dismissal is usually the last resort when a dispute arises in within an organisation but in this case Ricky has already worked his notice and terminated his employment, however before he did this he did lodge a complaint with the manager, Sean, Ricky brought to his attention his medical condition of being asthmatic and supplied him with a medical certificate that stated he was medical unfit to carry out the duty of dusting the shelves in the warehouse.

As far as Ricky is concerned he brought his concerns to the employer’s attention and utilised and exhausted the internal grievance procedure. The employer was given an adequate opportunity by the employee to deal with his concerns and had chosen not to do so. If Sean the General Manager was not happy with the medical certificate he should have requested that Ricky see a company doctor and received a second opinion, however...