Waste recycling firm N-Virocycle has been ordered to pay a lorry driver £24,656 after he was forced to resign when the company rejected his offers to take voluntary redundancy rather than be relocated from the firm’s Banbury site, which was closing, to a new hub that was a much longer commute for him.
Employment Judge Kate Hindmarch ruled that N-Virocycle needed to compensate the lorry driver, Wayne Clark, after refusing to consider his requests to be made redundant, when it “plainly was a redundancy”, and despite Clark offering to take a smaller payout.
In her written decision, published last week, the judge said: “The only driver permanently assigned to Banbury, the claimant, was in a pool of one and should have been entitled to redundancy as his place of work was closing.”
When N-Virocycle announced it was closing the site, Clark was told he would be moved to a new depot, which was significantly further from his home and would require him to do night shifts, the decision recorded.
This prompted Clark to volunteer for redundancy, but the decision noted that his “reasonable” offer was rejected. The judge ruled this dismissive action by N-irocycle breached the terms of Clark’s contract in such a serious way that it entitled him to resign a week later.
According to the decision, N-Virocycle claimed it had been advised that it couldn’t make Clark redundant because there was still a need for lorry drivers and that if he was made redundant it would require the company to consider other drivers for redundancy.
However the tribunal described this claim as “flawed logic”, since Clark was the only lorry driver assigned to work there.
The decision also found that, when Clark formally complained over the company’s response to his request, it failed to handle his grievance reasonably. Instead, N-Virocycle claimed that Clark had “engaged in a desperate attempt to force the company to engage in wrongdoing.”
Clark will receive a total of £24,006 for his unfair dismissal, and a further £650 in notice pay, the decision revealed.
