Multiple grievances: a reason to dismiss?

Abuse of rights

Employees have the statutory right to issue a grievance from day one of employment. Whilst some never go down this route, a few milk it for all it’s worth. After a while, this sort of behaviour is likely to wear thin - particularly if the employee’s various complaints are, generally, baseless or submitted simply to cause you irritation. But let’s suppose you subsequently dismiss the employee as a result of their multiple grievances. Would such a decision be OK?

Background facts

This is exactly what happened in the recent case of Woodhouse v West Home Leeds Ltd 2013. Mr Woodhouse (W) is black. Over a four-year period he lodged ten internal grievances which all alleged some form of race discrimination. In addition, he launched seven separate race discrimination claims before the tribunal. They were almost all found to be “empty allegations without any proper evidential basis or grounds for his suspicion”.

Breakdown of trust and confidence

Shortly before W lodged his seventh claim he told his line manager that he’d “lost faith in the organisation” and “was only staying on to fight the cases”. Senior managers felt this remark demonstrated a “breakdown in trust and confidence” so called him to a meeting to discuss the ongoing employment relationship. Following this, W was told that his employer felt there was no “sustainable working relationship” and he was paid in lieu of notice. As you can probably predict, W immediately issued another tribunal claim.

Allegations of victimisation

The tribunal listened carefully to W’s allegations of victimisation but found that the employer had not discriminated against him by reason of his race - it would have taken exactly the same action against any employee who had brought so many fruitless complaints against them. Undeterred by this ruling, W marched off to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT).

The EAT’s decision

Unfortunately for the employer, the EAT decided that the tribunal had the law all wrong - rather than looking at how the employer had reacted to W’s ongoing actions, it felt the tribunal should have focused on whether W was carrying out a “protected act”. As: (1) internal grievances and tribunal claims both fall into this category; and (2) there was no suggestion of bad faith on W’s part (which would have prevented the grievances amounting to protected acts), his dismissal amounted to victimisation.

Tip 1. Whilst this decision is disappointing, it doesn’t mean that you can’t ever dismiss an employee for raising multiple grievances. The EAT was quite clear that W’s grievances all related to some form of discrimination and, whilst misguided, they were made in good faith. The discrimination factor gave him additional protection.

Tip 2. If an employee persistently raises grievances for the sheer hell of it, or they are made in bad faith, this ruling is no help to them at all - you could still dismiss if there was a clear breakdown in trust and confidence, provided you followed the principles of the ACAS Code of Practice.