edundancy selected on driving record
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DRIVER, dismissed as redundant by Bulk Storage (Transport) Ltd fter he had written off his vehicle, has lost his claim for compensaion for unfair dismissal before a Hull industrial tribunal.
In its decision the tribunal said hat D. H. Benn, a class 1 driver, ad been made redundant in ather unusual circumstances. rade was bad, but the company ad kept going and in April was perating 17 vehicles, each with regular driver.
Mr Benn's record as a driver ad not been a good one. In 1977 he was convicted of danerous driving after an accident. n 1979 and 1980 he had colliions with other vehicles and on pril 14 this year he was involved in an accident at Cheser-le-Street which was a classic ase of driving without due care and attention.
The vehicle in front of him pulled up quickly because of a dog. Mr Benn was either travelling too close behind or was paying insufficient attention and he failed to pull up in time. The result was that his vehicle was a total write-off.
This was the second vehicle that Mr Benn had driven which had been written off and his record was by far the worst of the company's drivers. The matter was discussed with the shop steward and it was decided that if Mr Benn had to go it would be better for him to be dismissed for reasons of redundancy rather than for negligent driving.
It was a redundancy he had precipatated but nevertheless there was a genuine drop in the requirement for drivers as the company now required one fewer.
It was said on behalf of Mr Benn that it was not a redundancy as there was a spare vehicle which he could have driven. And other drivers had less service.
The spare vehicle was a relief one for use when others were being serviced. Although it would have been possible to put it into service on general duties, there were obvious difficulties in that there would be no spare vehicle for relief and emergency work. Neither did the company have enough work to keep all the vehicles going.
The plain situation was that management had a reduction in its requirements for drivers and that amounted to redundancy under the legislation. If that reduction in requirement was genuine then the tribunal could not say that the company should have kept Mr Benn on by redeploying its vehicles in circumstances it deemed uneconomic.
If it had been a matter of selecting for redundancy on length of service, there were two other drivers who would have been candidates, but the tribunal felt it was reasonable for the company to take into account Mr Benn's appalling record compared with the other drivers.