But I don’t want to go!!

One legal issue that rarely gets mentioned is what happens if a company decides to re-locate. Many contracts of employment include mobility clauses which effectively force employees to move, leave or face dismissal. While these clauses are perfectly legal, should an employee choose to leave as a result of the move it may not just be a simple case of dismissal or dealing with a resignation, and if an employee flatly refuses to move, you may have to acknowledge they’re redundant and pay redundancy or you may find yourself at the wrong end of an unfair dismissal claim.

In a recent case, a company decided to close one of their two sites and move the workforce to the remaining site. The company did make arrangements to make redundancy payments for “exceptional circumstances” to some staff who were elderly or had specific problems which made the move impossible, but during this process, two employees were told to move under their mobility clauses and when they refused to relocate, were dismissed.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal heard that although there was a redundancy situation, the actual reason given for dismissal was “misconduct”; but since the company thought that it could rely on mobility clauses to avoid paying out redundancy payments the Employment Appeal Tribunal found that the actual reason for the dismissals was the employees’ refusal to relocate. The Employment Appeal Tribunal also found that the instruction to relocate to offices on the other side of London to be unreasonable, even with the mobility clauses, so that made the decision to dismiss unfair.

Although these types of cases are always adjudged based on the specific circumstances involved, it pays to consider the company’s options. They demanded that their employees relocate without considering the possible legal ramifications, and had they acknowledged their positions would have been redundant and they could probably have been made redundant fairly which would have resulted in redundancy payments far less than the cost of the legal action and subsequent compensation paid. So if you are planning to relocate or downsize, why not give us a call.