Termination of Employment due to injury

Fishyfreak

Hi,

I’m looking for some opinions on my Father’s work situation.

To make a long story short. He is over 60 and has worked for a large multinational company driving and carrying out quite strenuous work every time he makes a delivery. He is with the company over 15 years.

He has suffered a back injury that cannot be put down completely to the nature of his work but is definitely a huge factor along with his age.

The back injury has been so severe that he is now unable to perform his job. After a period of being off sick the company began to engage with him to see what could be done. They made him a derisory offer to work for minimum wage doing various weekend/overnight shifts. The job is one that a student would do and for them to offer it to someone with such great service to the company was a huge insult. Before this injury, he had not 1 day off sick EVER. In fact, he rarely even took holidays.

When my father rejected the derisory job offer the company simply terminated his employment and washed their hands of him. Since being essentially sacked he has been made aware of other positions that had been filled within the company that (given his experience in the industry) he could have performed and would have closely matched his salary. This was something that was really annoying to him.

Has he any leg to stand on under employment law? Ethically, the company’s behaviour is appalling but is it lawful. Any help or input would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.

Please note i'm not looking for legal advice. he can go to a solicitor for that!

RangeR

What reason did they give for the termination?
You won't get legal advice here, contact a solicitor.

Fishyfreak

Hi,

The reason for termination was that he was unable to fulfil his role due to the injury.

Ok, i don't want to get the thread locked. I don't want legal opinions. I would be interested in people's general opinions and how they would proceed.

Cheers.

Stheno

Fishyfreak wrote: »

Hi,

The reason for termination was that he was unable to fulfil his role due to the injury.

Ok, i don't want to get the thread locked. I don't want legal opinions. I would be interested in people's general opinions and how they would proceed.

Cheers.

You've said yourself he is unable to do the job due to injury, so the company didn't do anything wrong here in my view.

bbam

They have discharged their responsibility correctly..

They engauged them about his injury..
Upon learning he was unfit for his current role they offered him whatever suitable alternative position they had available..
He declined to be facilitated in the alternative work, and so he became unemployable..

They played it by the book, any talk of other suitable work is hear-say and not relavent, it may not even have been available at the time and then people just like to talk....

It is completly acceptable to terminate an employees employment if they are become unfit to perform their job, him refusing alternative work just made the whole process watertight. I've seen this done and there is no recourse.

Bandana boy

One might argue that a long term employee with a good record could have expected more effort from the employer than one job with a significant wage decrease.

I wonder if there something more to this story.

Legally a solictor will give you better advise but it looks like on paper at least the company has discharged its duty.

Clauric

OP, reading your post threw up immediate RED FLAGS for me. Firstly, your father needs to speak to an employment law specialist immediately, as in tomorrow or Monday.

The issues that stand out, for me, are:

The nature of the injury. How did your father injure himself? Was it work related, as in,did he lift a box that was too heavy, or was it self inflicted? Did the company provide adequate training and equipment so that he could do his job in a safe manner?

The offer of alternative work. In general, a company should try and provide alternative work by redeploying the staff member to somewhere else, where their physical (or mental) health allows. This is common decency, and normally part if staff retention and loyalty. However, generally speaking, the work should be of a comparable nature, with similar pay and conditions as the job they were previously in.

Dismissal. An employee cannot simply be dismissed at a whim of the manager, especially with 15 years experience. There is something that has been missed out on in this scenario. It is either the employer messed up, and fired your father without following due process, or you omitted to put in something in your initial post.

I note that another poster said that they had done their duty (on tablet so can't quote or include references), but to draw a wider analogy, it would be like offering the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, in NYC, the role of junior janitor in Ulan Bator simply because he injured his waving/signing arm playing golf! <== I'm going to take grief for that.

You don't say in your post whether there was any disciplinary meetings held to discuss the matter, who dismissed him, whether the company followed their own dismissal procedures, etc. These are matters that you need to discuss with a solicitor.

Without knowing all the facts, and going only on your side of the story, there may be a case for unfair dismissal by the company, but that is my non legal opinion.

Fishyfreak

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

The injury is a back injury. It requires surgery.

The job entails driving from from home to home making deliveries of oil. At each delivery (circa 20 per day) he would be required to pull a 50kg hose through back gardens, houses, over walls etc. The injury, along with him getting on in the years, is definitely related to the strenious work.

I'm not going to name the company, but they are a large multinational that own petrol stations everywhere. Their IMO derisory job offer was working all sorts of mad shifts in a petrol station.

I'm not sure of their disciplinary procedures (something a solicitor will need to do) but their process was that they sent him to various medical practices to get assessments on the injury. After the received the medical reports they called him in for a meeting. At the meeting they offered him a job in a petrol station at a huge reduction in pay. He refused it after been given a couple of weeks to consider. Not long after he was sent a letter saying his employment was terminated.

There are no other factors at play, he is an old school hard worker who never missed a days work.

Clauric

Fishyfreak wrote: »

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

The injury is a back injury. It requires surgery.

The job entails driving from from home to home making deliveries of oil. At each delivery (circa 20 per day) he would be required to pull a 50kg hose through back gardens, houses, over walls etc. The injury, along with him getting on in the years, is definitely related to the strenious work.

I'm not going to name the company, but they are a large multinational that own petrol stations everywhere. Their IMO derisory job offer was working all sorts of mad shifts in a petrol station.

I'm not sure of their disciplinary procedures (something a solicitor will need to do) but their process was that they sent him to various medical practices to get assessments on the injury. After the received the medical reports they called him in for a meeting. At the meeting they offered him a job in a petrol station at a huge reduction in pay. He refused it after been given a couple of weeks to consider. Not long after he was sent a letter saying his employment was terminated.

There are no other factors at play, he is an old school hard worker who never missed a days work.

The only thing left to do is go and speak to an employment law solicitor immediately.

Mrs OBumble

Fishyfreak wrote: »

The injury, along with him getting on in the years, is definitely related to the strenious work.

Says who?

When exactly did the injury occur? If it's a gradual process type of thing, then you definitely would need a solicitor with experience in that area to take it further. Even the fact that you're saying "along with him getting on in the years" is making me think it's not straightforward.

What plans did your father have in place for when he was no longer able to carry out manual work? This is the bit that lots of manual workers miss out on - and really companies should be forcing them to think it through eariler, IMHO.

bbam

People are talking about disciplinary meetings and the like..

Why would there have been a disciplinary meeting ??

This would have been progressed as part of the sickness/illness policy in the company and no need for a disciplinary meeting.

From a case I was aware of in the past, the employee was given X time to make themselves available for their current duties. At that stage the company made Y position available as the employee was certified unable to perform their initial duties.
Employee refused to accept position Y, the only suitable alternative position available.
The company issued a letter requesting the employee to take up Y position within 30 days or have their contract terminated.
Employes contract was terminated on day 31.

This employee was never issued a warning or otherwise.