Carillion staff’s second compensation bid fails

More than 140 former Carillion staff have had their plea for compensation rejected at an Employment Appeal Tribunal.

The workers all lost their jobs when the £5.3bn-turnover contractor plunged into compulsory liquidation in January 2018, shocking the construction industry and tearing chunks of financial buffer out of the sector.

Represented by Unite, in November 2020 the 143 workers argued that they were not properly consulted on the redundancy process. But they were not granted compensation on the basis that they were informed in time about the decision to move towards redundancy and they had accepted that in official correspondence with Carillion’s administrators.

However, in the latter half of 2022, the 143 former staff members appealed the decision, saying that Carillion retained them as workers right until the company failed, without telling them of the decision to go into liquidation.

But the appeal judge ruled that the case represented a “second bite at the cherry”, adding that decisions would only be changed if “the tribunal has missed something important” or if new evidence has been put forward. It ruled that the circumstances had not been altered, and so it would not reconsider the application.

“A tribunal will not reconsider a finding of fact just because the claimant wishes it had gone in his favour,” the latest ruling said.

Construction News approached Unite for comment.

In July, three former Carillion directors were fined nearly £900,000 for “recklessly” publishing misleading accounts. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also said that if it wasn’t in liquidation, Carillion would have been fined £37.9m for the same offences.

A month later, the FCA released four lengthy reports, totalling nearly 300 pages, which detailed what happened at the company in the build-up to its collapse.

The reports document directors keeping crucial information from their audit committee and board, and changing their financial policies to paint a more positive picture of an increasingly desperate sink into collapse.