London: Three Indian-origin chicken factory workers in Britain, who were sacked over claims that they took cash bribes for jobs, have won claims for unfair dismissal.
Baljit Johal, Mukesh Kumar and Balwinder Jackhu won their cases for unfair dismissal at the Birmingham Employment Tribunal against 2 Sisters Food Group Ltd, the Birmingham Mail reported on Friday.
The three had sued the company after being dismissed over the anonymous allegations, which they always denied.
The night shift at the West Bromwich factory was “run like a gang†by supervisor Johal, shift manager Kumar and trainer Jackhu, the tribunal had heard earlier.
Sarah George, who represented the company, said that the men favoured family members and extracted money from vulnerable workers by promising jobs.
George added that the three were in positions of trust and temporary workers “might reasonably believe they had the power to secure jobs for themâ€.
The police did not take any action because no victim was prepared to be identified.
But all the three men denied the allegations and claimed members of Unite union, Britain’s biggest workers’ union, were paid 600 pounds to make false statements.
Tribunal judge David Dimbylow has now ruled the factory workers had been unfairly dismissed.
“The informants were not asked any testing questions, nor were the claimants’ accounts of events put to them for comment,†Dimbylow was quoted as saying.
“All the informants were anonymised on the grounds of ‘consistency’ and I could see no proper analysis was made of the necessity for such anonymity throughout,†he said.