Tesco has lost a landmark decision in the Supreme Court after it granted the Usdaw union permission to proceed with its case against the retailer’s use of so-called ‘fire and rehire’ practices.
Yesterday the highest court in the UK permitted the union, which is represented by social justice law firm Thompsons Solicitors, to take forward the case against Tesco, which accuses the supermarket giant of wanting to fire and rehire its staff in order to remove their entitlement to retained pay.
The case relates to workers employed at Tesco’s Daventry and Litchfield distribution centres, who won a legal victory in February when the High Court found that the parties had agreed retained pay was “permanent” and “guaranteed for life”.
However, in July a Court of Appeal judgment dealt a “significant setback” to lawyers representing the workers, overturning the initial court ruling.
Thompsons Solicitors won what was described as a landmark legal victory in February against the supermarket over its decision to dismiss a number of its staff and seek to re-engage them on inferior terms and conditions.
Neil Todd, a trade union specialist at Thompsons Solicitors, said: “We are delighted to have been given permission by the Supreme Court to proceed with this important case. The fight against fire and rehire is a pivotal one for the whole trade union movement.
“Tesco faces a fight as Usdaw is resolute that the workers concerned were given clear commitments by Tesco that retained pay was to be a permanent feature of their income.”
Joanne McGuinness, Usdaw national officer, added: “It has always been clear to us what we agreed with Tesco in respect of our members in receipt of retained pay. That is that they would have a right to this payment for as long as they remained employed by Tesco in their current role.
“The agreement was reached at a time when the organisation needed these individuals to remain in post as it could not have been operationally effective if they had chosen to leave. The workers agreed to remain in the business and relocate on the basis of the guarantee of these payments when they otherwise may have taken redundancy.
“We were therefore shocked when Tesco adopted fire and rehire tactics to try and strip this right away and this is why we sought an injunction from the High Court. We were very disappointed by the outcome at the Court of Appeal, but we made clear it would not end there without some recompense for our members and we would exhaust every avenue to protect our members’ terms and conditions of employment. The decision to grant permission is a further step doing everything we can to continue this fight.”
A Tesco spokesman said: ”A very small number of colleagues in our UK distribution network receive a supplement to their pay, which was offered a number of years ago as an incentive to retain colleagues. The vast majority of our distribution colleagues today do not receive this top-up, and so we took the decision to phase it out. We will continue to work constructively with the small number of colleagues affected to agree a way forward.”
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