The term bumping in redundancy means assigning employee ‘X’, whose job is redundant, to another job, and then dismissing employee ‘Y’, who holds that job. The reason for Y’s dismissal will be redundancy even though Y’s job is not redundant, because X’s job has ceased or diminished, and Y has been ‘bumped’ out as a consequence. In Mirab v Mentor Graphics (UK), M’s job as a Sales Director was redundant. An ET decided the employer had done sufficient in terms of looking for alternative roles and, specifically, had not been required to consider ‘bumping’ M into a lower account manager role because such an obligation only arose if M himself raised it. The EAT upheld M’s appeal. The ET had assumed there was a general rule that consideration of ‘bumping’ was not required unless it was raised by the employee, but that was not what case-law said. Case law was clear that there may be situations where it might be reasonable for an employer to look for a vacancy that might be created, possibly at the expense of another, albeit, that there was no rule that an employer must always consider ‘bumping’ to dismiss fairly. The ET had not applied the band of reasonable responses test in this regard.

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