In Morris v Metrolink RATP Dev Ltd, one of M’s colleagues provided him with a photograph (taken secretly) of an entry in a line manager’s diary about how candidates had performed in a restructuring exercise assessment which resulted in five union members being placed at risk of redundancy. M thought the comments were detrimental to the unsuccessful candidates. M asked to meet with HR. When it became apparent how the information had been obtained, disciplinary proceedings resulted in M being dismissed for storing and sharing a manager’s private and confidential information. The Court of Appeal upheld an ET’s decision that the dismissal was automatically unfair under S.152 Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, as M was taking part in the activities of an independent trade union by storing the information and raising it on behalf of members; it was also unfair under ordinary unfair dismissal provisions. The very limited way in which M used the information, which directly concerned his members and their interests, was not a major departure from good industrial relations practice and at most some sort of warning for storing and not deleting the information might have been appropriate.

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