Automatically Unfair COVID Dismissals

As expected, in the United Kingdom there has been an increase in employees seeking to bring claims of automatic unfair dismissal where they have been dismissed for:

• telling their employers about harmful circumstances related to health and safety;
• leaving work or refusing to go to work where the employee believed there was serious and imminent danger; and
• taking appropriate steps to protect themselves or others from serious and imminent danger.

The attraction of these claims is that employees can bring such claims even where they don't have two years' service, and automatic unfair dismissal in these cases is uncapped in compensation.

Recently, the employment tribunal has handed down another judgment in relation to an employee who has brought a combination of these claims, and we have taken a look at what the cases to date can tell us about the tribunal's approach to these issues generally.