Written by An Employment Tribunal has come under scrutiny for accepting an impossible timeline in a judgment involving Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd (MAEL) and Unite the Union. In the published ruling, the tribunal upheld Unite’s claim that the company failed to consult employees before mass redundancies – but did so while citing a key meeting on a date that defies chronology. The judgment records a Unite official’s testimony that a consultation meeting occurred on 21 December 2019, even though the same document notes that MAEL had entered administration on 4 January 2019 – nearly a year earlier . This glaring inconsistency was accepted without comment or correction, raising concerns about oversight in the tribunal process.
Monarch Aircraft Engineering’s parent airline collapsed in 2017, and the engineering arm entered administration in January 2019 after financial struggles. The Employment Tribunal’s handling of the case has raised questions about factual accuracy and regulatory oversight.
Chronological Impossibility in Tribunal Judgment
The case in question is Unite the Union v Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd (in administration), an Employment Tribunal claim (Case No. 3314501/2019) concerning the company’s alleged failure to consult staff over redundancies. In the tribunal’s written reasons, Employment Judge R. Lewis explicitly “accept[ed] the evidence of Mr P. Bouch”, a Unite national officer, regarding when management supposedly disclosed the impending collapse of MAEL . Mr. Bouch’s witness statement recalled a scheduled meeting with MAEL’s managing director “on I believe 21 December 2019” during which union officials were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in order to continue the meeting . After the NDA was signed, MAEL’s management allegedly informed them that the company was going into liquidation and that some staff would be made redundant and others transferred to different companies in the first week of January 2019 .
However, as the tribunal judgment itself acknowledges, MAEL went into administration on 4 January 2019 . In other words, the company’s collapse occurred almost a year before the cited December 2019 meeting could ever have taken place. This chronological impossibility – a meeting held after the business had already failed – was not corrected in the tribunal’s findings. The judgment does not remark on the date discrepancy at all, effectively treating the timeline as factual.
Legal analysts note that this meeting was central to the issue of whether MAEL engaged in proper consultation with employee representatives prior to insolvency. Accepting an erroneous date nearly 12 months off could indicate that the tribunal either failed to notice the mistake or did not consider it significant. Either scenario is troubling, given that tribunals are expected to rigorously examine evidence, especially in a case determining if the workforce was duly consulted about saving jobs. The absence of any clarification or correction in the official judgment has prompted alarm among observers and former employees alike.
Union Officials Gagged by NDAs
Evidence from the case and related proceedings sheds light on what likely should have been the correct timeline – and it underscores why the consultation never reached the workforce. Nathan Willock, a Unite representative at MAEL, provided a witness statement confirming that the pivotal meeting with management actually took place in December 2018, not 2019. Mr. Willock testified that on 18 December 2018 he and others attended a meeting at MAEL’s Luton hangar and were asked to sign an NDA by the company’s management . “By signing this agreement I was unable to discuss with any of the Unite union members anything that was discussed at that meeting, regarding current and future employment,” Mr. Willock stated . Other Unite officials and members of the company’s Joint National Consultation Committee (JNCC) were also present and similarly bound to secrecy by the NDA .
In effect, union and employee representatives were gagged at the very moment they learned of the company’s impending collapse. They were told of MAEL’s plan to enter administration and lay off staff, but could not warn or consult the broader workforce about these developments. Tribunal documents from a separate case (Ward & Others v MAEL) confirm that JNCC representatives were informed in late 2018 that the company would be placed into administration, and they signed NDAs specifically to ensure they “did not tell any employees” . Crucially, no actual consultation with employees occurred at this stage – the NDA meeting was merely to inform union reps of the situation, without allowing them to seek input or proposals from staff on how jobs might be saved.
This sequence of events casts the tribunal’s timeline error in a revealing light. It appears the intended reference was to 21 December 2018, when staff representatives were finally told (under NDA) of the coming redundancies. Indeed, employees were subsequently informed just before Christmas 2018 – on 21 December 2018 – about imminent job losses and transfers to other companies in early January . Why Mr. Bouch’s evidence was recorded as “21 December 2019” remains unclear, but the implication is that an obvious typo or factual slip made it into the final judgment unchecked.
Former MAEL employees and aviation industry commentators have raised concerns that Unite’s handling of the situation may have inadvertently undermined other workers’ legal claims. Because union officials were silenced by an NDA, many employees (especially non-union staff) had no advance warning of the insolvency – and thus missed any opportunity for meaningful consultation or timely legal action. Unite eventually filed its own tribunal claim on behalf of its members in May 2019, several months after the collapse . Some individual ex-employees, such as those in the Ward & Others case, launched separate claims for protective awards (compensation for lack of consultation). But by the time Unite’s case was heard in 2022, the tribunal could only retroactively acknowledge that “there was no consultation at all” before the decision to go into administration . The combination of NDA-imposed silence and delayed legal action leads to difficult questions about whether the union’s approach – however well-intentioned – left many workers in the dark and potentially forfeited their chance to seek justice.
Safety Risks as Company Kept Operating
The Monarch saga not only raises employment law issues, but also highlights aviation safety concerns during the company’s final weeks. After Monarch Airlines’ collapse in 2017, its engineering subsidiary MAEL struggled on independently, but by late 2018 it was in deep financial distress. In November 2018, MAEL entered a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) with creditors in an attempt to restructure its debts. According to industry reports, by 9 November 2018 the company had become insolvent and was unable to procure necessary equipment and spare parts, severely impacting its maintenance operations .
Despite being functionally insolvent, MAEL continued to perform safety-critical aircraft maintenance work for client airlines right up until it went into administration in January 2019. Staff on the ground have described increasingly dire conditions – at one point the company reportedly ran out of essential supplies such as aircraft engine oil and cleaning rags. Engineers even lacked printer paper needed for maintenance manuals and job cards, meaning some tasks had to be carried out from memory due to an inability to print instructions. These circumstances put enormous strain on the licensed aircraft engineers responsible for signing off planes as airworthy.
Aviation regulations are clear that a maintenance organisation must have adequate resources to assure safety. Operating a repair facility that lacks basic materials could constitute a breach of Civil Aviation Authority and European Aviation Safety Agency rules – notably CAA/EASA Part 145.A.30(a), which requires approved maintenance organisations to have sufficient competent staff and resources to carry out their work safely. The scenario at MAEL raised the spectre of engineers being pressured to certify aircraft as airworthy even when proper maintenance standards could not be met. In essence, if an aircraft was released back into service under those conditions, it might amount to a false airworthiness certification – a serious regulatory and potentially criminal issue.
It remains unclear what regulatory oversight occurred during this turbulent period. The UK CAA had an unusual dual role, as an associated trust of the CAA (the Airline Insolvency “ATT” trust) had taken a stake in MAEL as part of the rescue efforts . This created a complex situation where the regulator was indirectly involved in the company it regulated. Observers have since questioned whether the CAA’s closeness to the process led to regulatory leniency, allowing MAEL to continue operating in a state that normally would have prompted intervention. Fortunately, no accidents were attributed to Monarch’s maintenance issues during this time. However, the potential risks were significant, and the case has been cited as an example of how financial pressures can erode safety margins in aviation if regulators and company management do not act decisively.
Is the Tribunal System Fit for Purpose?
The Employment Tribunal’s acceptance of a fundamental factual error in the Monarch Engineering case has led to broader questions about the tribunal system’s effectiveness. If a clear chronological impossibility can appear in a published judgment – and go unremarked upon – what does that say about the quality of scrutiny and fact-checking in tribunal decisions? For the former Monarch employees, this error is not a mere technicality; it strikes at the heart of their case. The entire issue before the tribunal was whether the company properly consulted staff before deciding on mass redundancies. By mistakenly referencing a meeting in “December 2019”, the judgment seemingly places a key consultation after the company’s collapse, which could cloud the narrative of what really happened.
Court observers note that mechanisms do exist to correct judgments (under Rule 67 of the Employment Tribunal Rules, for example, parties can ask for clerical mistakes to be fixed). However, as of now, there is no public indication that this error has been formally corrected. A recent Freedom of Information request to the tribunal service sought clarification on the date in Mr. Bouch’s evidence, suggesting it should have read 2018 . The tribunal responded that it had no record of any correction being issued, effectively leaving the original judgment – impossible date and all – on the record.
For ordinary readers and the public, such an oversight undermines confidence in the tribunal system. Employment Tribunals are meant to be accessible forums of justice for workers and employers, but mistakes like this raise the concern that outcomes might rest on shaky factual foundations. If a tribunal can uphold a claim while missing a one-year discrepancy in the timeline, one might wonder what other errors slip through in cases that don’t attract outside attention.
Ultimately, the Monarch Engineering case highlights the need for rigorous fact-checking and accountability. It also exposes the tangled interplay between labour rights and safety issues in an insolvency scenario. Employees of MAEL not only lost their jobs with little warning, but they also faced potential safety risks in the final days and, later, a legal process that recorded the story incorrectly. The case leaves us with challenging questions: How did multiple parties – union officials, company administrators, and a tribunal judge – allow a crucial date to go uncorrected? And more importantly, if the employment tribunal system can accept such a fundamental error without scrutiny, is it truly fit for purpose? The hope is that shining a light on this episode will prompt improvements, ensuring that facts are checked, consultations are genuine, and regulators remain vigilant even amid a crisis.
Sources:
- Employment Tribunal judgment in Unite the Union v Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd (in administration) & Ors, Case No. 3314501/2019 .
- Witness Statement of Nathan Willock (1 Feb 2022) .
- Employment Tribunal judgment in Mr J.R. Ward & Others v Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd, Case No. 3200957/2019 .
- Examining Regulatory Oversight During Airline Insolvencies: The CAA’s Role – LinkedIn article by John Barwell (28 Aug 2024) .
- Press Association report on MAEL’s administration (The Guardian, 4 Jan 2019) .
Legal disclaimer
The content of this article is drawn entirely from publicly available documents—principally Employment Tribunal judgments and sworn witness statements—and is offered for general information and comment. It does not constitute legal advice. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, no assurance is given that the material is complete, current or free from error. Neither the author nor any associated parties accept liability for loss or damage arising from reliance on this publication. Readers should seek independent legal counsel for advice on their specific circumstances. All views expressed are those of the author alone.