Court of Appeal Agrees Employee Was Not Automatically Unfairly Dismissed for Refusing to Attend the Workplace During COVID-19
The Court of Appeal held the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) was correct in deciding a claimant was not automatically unfairly dismissed when he refused to attend work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What Was the Background to the Case?
In June 2019 Mr Rodgers started working for Leeds Laser Cutting Ltd. During the first national lockdown in March 2020, the company remained open. At the end of March 2020 Mr Rodgers informed his employer that he would have to stay away from the workplace due to having vulnerable children. Mr Rodgers contacted his employer at the end of April 2020 confirming he understood he had been dismissed for this. He then brought a claim for automatic unfair dismissal.
This case heard by the Court of Appeal focused on his claim under section 100(1)(d) Employment Rights Act 1996. This section states that an employee will be automatically unfairly dismissed where, "in circumstances of danger which the employee reasonably believed to be serious and imminent and which he could not reasonably have been expected to avert, he left…or… refused to return to his place of work".
We previously reported on the ET decision and the EAT decision which both rejected Mr Rodger's claim. The lower courts held that Mr Rodgers did not believe that there were circumstances of serious and imminent danger particularly attributable to his workplace, but instead that there were general circumstances of serious and imminent danger all around due to the pandemic.
What Did the Court of Appeal Decide?
The Court of Appeal upheld the EAT's decision. It had been entitled to find the employee did not believe there were circumstances of serious and imminent danger at his workplace. In order for a claim under section 100(d) to succeed, the danger must arise at the employee's workplace and the employee must believe they are subject to the danger as a result of being at the workplace. General dangers such as pandemics can constitute circumstances of danger for the purposes of the claim, the employee must reasonably believe those circumstances present a serious and imminent danger at their workplace in order for the claim to succeed.