Case law: what is - and isn't - a statutory grievance

Following a recent case, businesses now have more guidance on what counts as an employee's statutory grievance and would therefore trigger the statutory grievance procedures.

An employee was told at a meeting that she was not getting a pay rise because she was pregnant. She left work in distress and was off work for a week. She filled in an Absence Report Form on her return, saying "Following on from meeting with Mark and Richard, went home very upset. Didn't sleep and suffered numerous nose bleeds."

She subsequently claimed that this was a written statutory grievance, so that her employer should have followed the statutory grievance procedure. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) disagreed. It said a statutory grievance had to consist of three factors, which must be:

• a complaint by an employee about action which his or her employer has taken, or is contemplating taking in relation to them
• which is in writing
• which informs the employer what the basis for the grievance was.

The Absence Report Form did not make it clear why the employee was upset, and so failed to set out the basis for the grievance as required.

The EAT did suggest that, if the employee had said she was unhappy with her pay rise at the time of the first meeting, the Absence Report Form may have constituted a statutory written grievance.

If the statutory grievance procedure applies to their business, employers should be alert to any written evidence of dissatisfaction from an employee, including notes, emails or other document produced by a manager or other employee, and take legal advice if they are unsure whether it is a statutory grievance. Employers with their own grievance procedure should ensure that they are alert to any expression of a grievance that satisfies their own rules.

Operative date: Immediate