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Employment Law – Unfair Dismissal – Constructive Dismissal
By LaMesaDuiLawyer | February 20, 2010
The case of Thornley v Land Securities Trillium Ltd [2005] concerned a claim for unfair and constructive dismissal by an employee who alleged that her employer imposed a replacement job description on her and she or he contended that her contract of employment was fundamentally breached by such changes to her duties imposed by her employer. The Tribunal upheld this claim.
The employee was originally used by the BBC as an architect in its construction management department. On or around 12 November 2001, a considerable part of the development department was transferred to the appellant employer, Thornley, beneath the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1982.
Following this transfer, the employer announced its plans to restructure the department. This meant that the employee’s role would have modified to that of a managerial role from the hands-on architectural work she had previously done. On or around 1 October 2002, the worker attended a gathering where she indicated that she believed her position was being created redundant. She wrote to the employer stating that as a result of the proposed restructuring, her skilled experience was being dissipated and she or he was changing into de-skilled as an architect. She also stated that her position was being made redundant. On or around 8 December, she again wrote to her employer raising a grievance in respect of the new role, which she claimed wasn’t comparable with the task specification of the role she had when she was transferred to the employer.
She brought a grievance hearing and following this hearing on twenty eight January 2003, the worker was informed that her position was not redundant. On thirteen February, she resigned on the grounds of constructive dismissal. The worker then created an employment tribunal claim where she claimed constructive dismissal. The tribunal found {that the} effective explanation for the employee’s resignation had been the imposition of the new job description, which fundamentally breached the terms of her contract, with the result that the worker was entitled to resign and to be treated as having been dismissed. The tribunal therefore upheld her claim. The employer appealed to the Employment Attractiveness Tribunal (EAT).
The employer in its appeal contended {that the} tribunal had misconstrued the worker’s contract of employment:
The tribunal’s decision was perverse;
The issues for the determination by the EAT were whether the tribunal had erred in arriving at its conclusion regarding:
the extent of the employee’s duties below her contract;
the extent to which those duties were to be modified;
whether the employer had been entitled to vary her duties; and
if not, whether or not the employer’s breach of contract was a basic breach entitling her to resign.
The EAT dismissed the charm and held that within the circumstances:
the tribunal was entitled to conclude {that the} changes to the employee’s duties under her contract of employment were a fundamental breach of her contract;
the tribunal didn’t err in its construction of the employee’s contract or in concluding that by the changes proposed to her duties, the employer had intended to not be bound by her contract;
the tribunal’s call that the worker was entitled to resign on the idea of constructive dismissal was correct;
no error might be detected within the approach in that the tribunal identified the employee’s specific duties underneath her contract of employment;
the tribunal’s conclusions on the evidence that there have been important changes to her duties, which would have had the impact of deskilling her as an architect, were unimpeachable; and
the worker’s contract, scan as a full, did not permit the employer to change the worker’s duties to the extent and nature it had proposed.
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