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Dismissed employee receives £26,000
Page 29
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A FAILURE By Dutch haulier Jan de Rijk Transport to have proper procedures for disciplining staff has led to the company having to pay former operations manager Charlie Sandhu £26,000.
Sandhu had been employed as the company's London operations manager. The company became concerned about the high level of expenditure on agency drivers in the UK.
Sandhu was summoned to a meeting in Holland in December 2002 and told that he was being dismissed for misconduct as the company felt that he had abused the arrangements with agency drivers. Sandhu spent most of the meeting sorting out a financially beneficial way of leaving the company.
A Reading Employment Tribunal dismissed Sandhu's claim that he had been unfairly dismissed. It concluded that Sandhu left because of the favourable terms he negotiated. That decision was upheld by the Employment Appeals Tribunal. However, it was overturned by the Court of Appeal last year, who directed that the case be heard again by a different Employment Tribunal. Lord Justice Wall said that it could not be argued that he was negotiating freely. He had had no warning that the purpose of the December meeting was to dismiss him. He had no advice and no time to reflect. Sadhu had been doing his best, on his own, to salvage what he could from the inevitable fact that he was going to be dismissed. This was not free unpressurised negotiation.
Settlement was agreed between the parties prior to the case corning before a fresh Employment Tribunal.