Trade union membership and activities

It is automatically unfair to select for redundancy on grounds of trade union membership or activities (section 153, Trade Union and Labour Relations Consolidation Act 1992). This includes activities connected with union recognition.

The selection of two employees for having been strike activists was an automatically unfair dismissal (Britool v Roberts [1993] IRLR 481). So too was selecting someone for redundancy because they spent too much time on union activities (Dundon v GPT [1995] IRLR 403).

Equally, an employer cannot assess an employee based on skills demonstrated while acting as a safety rep (Smiths Industries v Rawlings [1996] IRLR 656). An employee’s duties as a trade union or safety rep should not impact, positively or negatively, on a redundancy selection decision.

But a union rep who was given a different role to accommodate his trade union duties was not unfairly dismissed when he was selected for redundancy from that role, even though there was still a need for work in his original post (O’Dea v ISC Chemicals [1995] IRLR 599).

It is automatically unfair (section 104F of the ERA 96) to select an employee for redundancy where the reason for selection relates to a blacklist (see page 132).