Redundancy decision upheld as fair and reasonable…

The Employment Relations Authority has dismissed a personal grievance claim for the unjustified dismissal of a long-standing employee based on a redundancy.

The employer had decided to make its processes more efficient and they needed a person with more IT skills.  They decided that given the employee’s lack of IT skills that it was not practical to retrain him with those skills and so made him redundant, and contracted in external providers with the necessary IT skills.

The ERA accepted that these were decisions a fair and reasonable employer could make and it could not substitute its views for those of a reasonable employer. 

As the employer had also followed a fair and reasonable process by consulting with the employee there was no unjustified dismissal.

 

Alan Knowsley