Working under protest, constructive dismissal and fire & rehire

[CamPostie]

So Captain Thompson appears to be carrying on regardless, with consultation on redundancies a foot and a raft of imposed changes likely to happen for those of us left behind.

Now throughout this saga, part of me has wondered why Simon has put all this effort into “negotiating” when he was clearly not going to move from the original offer?

Why not just push through everything via executive action?

Well I now ponder that the negotiations have been a method to provide RM a defence against any claims of constructive dismissal or similar from 100,000+ employees, especially given it’s becoming more and more clear that there is just a little bit of fire and rehire going on here too!

However, I don’t know - I feel there might be an avenue for a claim here, especially as it seems RM’s own lawyers are pretty crap at predicting the law themselves.

So I guess what I’m wanting from this topic is comments from anyone better versed in employment law.

• Could this situation be considered constructive dismissal?
• How does “working under protest” work, what would one have to do?
• Fire & Rehire remains legal I believe, dispite the strong words from government following the P&O saga, but there is guidance on the ACAS website that states what steps an employer should follow - do you consider that RM have followed those?

[Murdoch]

For me, when I looked into Fire & Rehire, and the code of conduct companies have to follow to go down that route, it looked as if Royal Mail were checking them off one by one. The final one being the ACAS negotiations with no agreement.

For the record, Fire & Rehire should be illegal, Labour says they will make it illegal, but currently it is legal.

However, they'd leave themselves open to legal action and potentially thousands of tribunal cases.

Nothing with this company would surprise me.

[CamPostie]

For me, when I looked into Fire & Rehire, and the code of conduct companies have to follow to go down that route, it looked as if Royal Mail were checking them off one by one. The final one being the ACAS negotiations with no agreement.

For the record, Fire & Rehire should be illegal, Labour says they will make it illegal, but currently it is legal.

However, they'd leave themselves open to legal action and potentially thousands of tribunal cases.

Nothing with this company would surprise me.

I agree - that was why they were so adamant on going to ACAS.

I also can’t help but think strikes (like the ones announced tonight) are useless now.

They had to go full walk out until settled here if they were to do anything - but then, what postie can afford to do that right now - so I can see why they haven’t.

But perhaps what the CWU should be doing is briefing members on how to “work under protest” and start preparing a joint legal claim of constructive dismissal.


, but getting members to be prepared to “work under protest” would be much stronger.