Twelve ex-employees of a construction firm have been awarded compensation after their employer – which fell into administration last year – did not hold a formal consultation process.
The former employees of groundworks company Bowie Construction will receive their payouts from the government’s Redundancy Payments Service as the business is now defunct.
The tribunal found that the employees had been due a protective award under the Trade Union & Labour (Consolidation) Act 1992.
The firm had failed to comply with the legislation by not paying remuneration for a protected period of 90 days from 13 March 2024, when they were effectively dismissed.
Collective redundancy
More than 20 employees were made redundant or placed at risk of redundancy but then dismissed without any consultation having taken place, the tribunal found.
The judge said that administrators for Bowie responded to the tribunal process and gave consent for the awards to be made.
This is not the first case of construction workers taking tribunal action against now-defunct contractors.
The collapse of FTSE-listed construction firm Carillion in 2018 led to thousands of redundancy dismissals for which the company should have undertaken collective consultation.
Several employees subsequently issued claims for protective awards and the Unite union announced plans to take legal action against the company, claiming it was aware of its deteriorating financial situation months before going into liquidation and could have held a collective consultation process.
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Carillion claimed the compulsory liquidation qualified as “special circumstances” under which it would not have to comply with the consultation requirement, but this was dismissed.
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