“… In my view, the introduction of constructive dismissal was an admirable step. It provides the beleaguered employee with a measure of empowerment and allows them to bring an unsatisfactory situation to an end whilst, at the same, affording a means of access to an employment tribunal. The way in which constructive dismissal is expressed is, though, of very considerable consequence. In his judgment in Buckley v Bournemouth University Sedley LJ explains that ‘Modern employment law is a hybrid of contract and status. The way Parliament has done this is to graft statutory protections on to the stem of the common law contract’. Constructive dismissal was grafted onto the common law with the consequence that the circumstances which ‘can bring about a constructive dismissal is determined not by the Act, which is silent on the subject, but by the common law. The common law holds that they must be circumstances amounting to a fundamental or repudiatory breach of contract by the employer’. This article looks at how effective the exercise in grafting has been and whether reform might be required …”
Douglas Brodie, Constructive Dismissal: The Contractual Maze, King’s Law Journal, https://doi.org/10.1080/09615768.2022.2093620. Published online 12 July.
First posted 2022-07-13 13:00:27
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