Iceland Frozen Foods Ltd v Jones

Browne-Wilkinson J. delivered the following judgment of the appeal tribunal. This is an appeal from a decision of an industrial tribunal which held that Mr. Jones, the employee, had been unfairly dismissed by his employers, Iceland Frozen Foods Ltd. He was employed by the company from April 13, 1980, until July 2, 1981, when he was summarily dismissed by the warehouse distribution manager, Mr. Boyland. The employers carry on business in retail food distribution selling frozen foods. They operate 43 shops all of which are supplied from a cold store at the Deeside Industrial Estate at Queensferry. Adjacent to that store are the administrative offices of the company. The store and the administrative offices do not intercommunicate. At the time of his dismissal the employee was the night shift foreman at the warehouse. The company is of fair size with about 450 employees altogether.

The circumstances of the dismissal were these. The night shift operated a 40 hour week. If, on any night, they had finished their work they knocked off early; if they had not finished their work by the end of the shift they continued to work thereafter. Only if in any week they had in all worked more than 40 hours was overtime paid. They were also working under a scheme which provided a bonus in the event that errors in the loading of the lorries were avoided. The ordinary night shift hours were from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. There was a break between the last day shift and the commencement of the night shift, and also a break between the end of the night shift at 6 a.m. and the commencement of ordinary work some hour and a half later. It was part of the employee's duties at the start of the night shift to unlock the warehouse and disconnect the electronic security system covering both the warehouse and the office. At the end of the night shift, it was his duty to lock up the warehouse (and the office accommodation if it were open) and to re-activate the security system which was itself linked to a central security system run by an independent contractor.

The events in question took place on the night of July 1 and 2, 1981. When the day shift arrived on the morning of July 2 it was found that the office accommodation was unlocked and although the warehouse was locked the electronic security system had not been re-activated. Mr. Boyland was present when that was discovered. Mr. Boyland then looked into the matter with the security company and confirmed that the electronic alarm had not been re-activated. He drew the inference, correctly, that the employee could not have locked the administrative block or re-activated the alarm before leaving the premises after the conclusion of the night shift. He also discovered that the night shift had worked for the full eight hours on the night of July 1 and 2 but the number of items that had been loaded was substantially smaller that the normal average for a full eight hour shift; indeed, it was approximately 20 per cent. less than on the previous night. He reached the conclusion that there had been a deliberate “go-slow” by the night shift workers with the objective of earning overtime for that week. He thought that the employee, as foreman, must be a party to that deliberate go-slow.

As a result, Mr. Boyland summoned the employee to an interview before the start of the night shift on the evening of July 2. The meeting took place at 6.30 p.m. and lasted for about 10 minutes. The industrial tribunal were unable to make express findings as to what took place at that meeting save in certain respects which we will mention hereafter. At the conclusion of the meeting Mr. Boyland summarily dismissed the employee.

The...