The Employment Tribunal found that age was a motivating factor in an employee’s dismissal despite attempts to cast it as performance-related or redundancy.
Facts
Mr Gregory began working at Petro Trace as a Geophysicist in September 2017. On 17 August 2021, he was informed during a meeting that he was being made redundant due to a lack of work. Prior to this meeting, there were email exchanges among senior managers, discussing the replacement of Mr. Gregory. In these emails, the senior management referred to Mr. Gregory's age, calling him "a pensioner" and "far over 60 years old," and discussed replacing him with "younger and more active experts." No evidence of financial downturn or performance issues was presented.
Mr. Gregory received a letter on 24 August 2021, confirming the termination of his contract without explicitly using the term "redundancy." He sought clarification and eventually received a notice of redundancy, citing a "downturn in the oil industry" as the reason for termination.
On 24 October 2021, Mr. Gregory raised concerns that his age played a role in his dismissal. He had a meeting with the managing director to discuss this, during which the managing director became aggressive. A draft letter, not sent, was prepared on 2 November 2021, seemingly attempting to dismiss Mr. Gregory based on performance, although specific details about performance were left blank.
Following Mr. Gregory's appeal against the dismissal, an investigation failed to identify specific serious or genuine performance concerns during his employment. Consequently, Mr. Gregory filed claims of unfair dismissal, direct age discrimination, direct race discrimination, victimisation, failure to pay notice, and failure to pay statutory redundancy pay against Petro Trace.
Decision
The Tribunal found that Petro Trace had failed to establish that performance or redundancy were the reasons for dismissal. There was no other potentially fair reason.
The comments made in the emails demonstrated that Petro Trace was motivated to dismiss Mr Gregory by reason of his age. The claim of age discrimination, but not race discrimination, was upheld.
In total, Mr Gregory was awarded £340,212.80. At the date of his dismissal, Mr Gregory was 62. The Tribunal found that he would have worked full time with Petro Trace until age 65 then half time until age 66 and that, given his age and the fact that he worked in a niche industry, he was unlikely to find commensurate work elsewhere. The injury to feelings was ranked in the middle of the Vento bandings as the discrimination and victimisation had a long-term effect on his mental and physical health. For this he was awarded £20,000.
The judgment is available here.
Gregory v Petro Trace Ltd, case number 3304188/2022, 06 September 2023