Tesco Fire Re-Hire Employment Case Supreme Court

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UKSC/2022/0133

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EMPLOYMENT

Tesco Stores Ltd (Respondent) v Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and others (Appellants)

Judgment given

Contents

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Case summary

Case ID

UKSC/2022/0133

Parties

Appellant(s)

Union of Shop. Distributive and Allied Workers

Cristopher Webb

Jagpreet Singh

Sandeep Kumar

Respondent(s)

Tesco Stores Ltd

Issue

Was the Court of Appeal wrong to find that Tesco was entitled to terminate certain employment contracts which included an entitlement to "Retained Pay", described as "permanent", and offer re-engagement on terms without Retained Pay (the so-called "fire and re-hire" mechanism)?

Facts

In 2007, Tesco Stores Limited ("Tesco") planned to open new distribution centres and close others. To retain staff, it offered a significant enhancement to the pay of staff willing to relocate from its Lichfield centre to its Daventry centre. This pay is referred to as "Retained Pay". By incorporation of a collective agreement, the Retained Pay was described as "permanent" and, by the terms of the agreements, was stated as only changeable by mutual consent.

In January 2021, Tesco wished to bring Retained Pay to an end. It therefore gave notice to the relevant staff that it intended to seek their agreement to remove Retained Pay from their contracts in exchange for a payment. If an employee did not agree to this change, their employment contract would be terminated and they would be offered re-engagement on different terms ("fire and rehire").

The individual appellants are employees who have refused to give up their Retained Pay. They brought a claim in the High Court, seeking a declaration that their employment contracts granted an entitlement to Retained Pay, that they were subject to an implied term that Tesco could not terminate the contracts for the purposes of removing Retained Pay and an injunction preventing Tesco from terminating the contracts. The appellants were successful in the High Court, but the appeal was allowed in the Court of Appeal. The appellants now appeal to the Supreme Court.

Date of issue

9 August 2022

Judgment appealed

[2022] EWCA Civ 978 HTML

Judgment details

Judgment date

12 September 2024

Neutral citation

[2024] UKSC 28

Judgment links

PDF Judgment (PDF)

PDF | 392.83 KB

12 September 2024 PDF Press summary (PDF)

PDF | 245.58 KB

12 September 2024 Judgment (HTML version) HTML

Press summary (HTML version) HTML

Judgment on The National Archives (HTML version) HTML

Press summary on The National Archives (HTML Version) HTML

Judgment on BAILII (HTML version) HTML

Judgment summary

8 October 2024

Watch the archived video.

Appeal

Justices

Lord Reed

Lord Lloyd-Jones

Lord Leggatt

Lord Burrows

Lady Simler

Hearing dates

Full hearing

Start date

23 April 2024

End date

23 April 2024

Half hearing

Start date

24 April 2024

End date

24 April 2024

Watch hearings

23 April 2024 - Morning session

Watch the archived video.

23 April 2024 - Afternoon session

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24 April 2024 - Morning session

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Change log

Last updated 16 April 2024

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