Question regarding joint bundle of documents for Employment Tribunal

green_chilly

I have an Employment Tribunal hearing coming up for unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination as new mother against my employer. According to the orders we have to prepare a joint bundle of documents. I would like to know if it is claimant's responsibility to prepare the bundle or it is a shared responsibility.

viktory

I would imagine that both of you will have prepare documents. You will have (I assume) letters, copies of your contract, witness statements etc and so will they. I *think* that the bundles are exchanged so you see theirs and they see yours.

I may be wrong, but I am rather concerned that you are taking this action and seem woefully ill prepared. Have you a solicitor or someone to help?

dickydonkin

I may be wrong, but I am rather concerned that you are taking this action and seem woefully ill prepared. Have you a solicitor or someone to help?

viktory has made a valid point.

By virtue of you asking such a question on this forum would suggest that you do not have a solicitor on your case as s/he would have all of the formalities arranged for you.

As suggested by victory, you should have all of the documents that will be relevant for your claim. If you do need to exchange 'bundles', ensure that the exchange is reciprocal i.e. I will give you mine when you give me yours, however, this would need to be arranged with the respondents legal representative.

I would certainly suggest you get some help if you have not received any - very quickly.

green_chilly

Thanks for the replies. My situation is as follows:

I was a permanent employee in UK. My case is related to my employer not allowing me to join work in UK as I am a national of another country and was out of UK on maternity leave. My work permit and UK visa were up for renewel but they misguided me verbally that I was not eligible for extention of my work permit due to government laws which was not the case. I did not do any investigation of my own at that time and accepted the termination.

I did try to get legal help in retaining a solicitor firm but they took too long to reply and made glaring mistakes when describing events in putting together my grieviance application and they sent it to employer without me getting a look at the final draft. However, I would not have been comfortable standing upto cross examination so I decided to go on my own. Also, as out of work new mother I do not have the resources to hire expensive lawyer and my husband is not too happy about me going on wild goose chase as he is barely able to support us.

We have already exchanged our doucments but I made the mistake of disclosing my list first. Anyway, employers had filed a theft report that included company's computer from HR's home within days after recieving my greivance notice. They claim that they do not hold old documents which I required to prove point that employer had a history of not having any procedures in place.

When I asked them to forward all documents/ emails that have been exchanged since I notified of my start of maternity leave, their solicitor said that I can only ask for relevent documents and that I was trying a 'fishing expedition'. I told them that as I need to prove certain points of my case so any information that they may think is not relevent to the case even then I do have the right to examine it. But I was told that they did not have any further information.

When I asked the employer's solicitor if she would help put together half of the bundle by including the documents that are in common posession, she replied that she thought that I should be able to do that as I have all the doucments. When I asked if joint bundle meant joint responsibility, she offered to take over the entire task. I have now prepared the entire bundle by myself as it gives me more control over it's presentation even though it has meant hard work of several weeks.

We need to exchange witness statement in about 7 days time. I was busy preparing the bundle all this while so it has left me in a bit of tight spot regarding number of available days.

There were only verbal communications between my employer and me regarding me wanting to join work and they telling me that they would not sponsor me any further. However, in ET3 response they claimed that I showed no interest in comin back and as my visa had expired so they had no choice but to terminate my work. Employer had categorically told me that they were not going to sponsor me further and I could not have travelled to UK with a few months old baby when my visa expiration date was just 3.5 weeks away not knowing where I stood with the company and legal status in UK. I have unused return ticket and ongoing mobile bill payments to prove that I had every intention to return to work in UK. They also claimed that I left no forwarding address when they always had my permanent address and current phone number.

As all this conversation took place verbally and employer provided me with no written notices about joining date and no notice period, how do I prove my point that they misled me into believing that I was not entitled for continuation of employment which was the reason I did not return to UK before my visa expiry.

viktory

Sorry, but I think you have little chance of winning this. Sounds to me like you are very naive in the procedures and processes of an employment tribunal and you have no solicitor to help. They on the other hand, have plenty of time, plenty of experience and a solicitor on the case. Add to that the fact that your case is based on verbal exchanges and you have little to offer in the way of evidence. Have you got any witnesses to the verbal exchanges?

How does having ongoing mobile bill payments and a return ticket prove your intention to return to work? All that proves (in my unexperienced opinion) is that you intended to return to the UK - not that you intended to return to your job. Did you not confirm your intentions to your employer in writing?

green_chilly

I did not provide in writing, but we were in touch over phone mainly and there is an email in which I sent them reminder about filling my taxes as the tax year was near completion.

Also, I think can prove that it was due to my being away on maternity that caused them to terminate my employment because they as such do not have work for me in their office but depend on me to procure work for myself from jobsearch in open market. They are a UK based company run by Indian nationals and the head HR sits in India so perhaps they did not have complete knowledge of UK laws and had initially refused me my complete maternity entitlements as I too am Indian national. They gave in only after I provided them with links about UK laws for which I have emails proof.

Employer used my upcoming visa renewel as reason to terminate employment without serving me with written notice.
In addition, they had been giving me wrong salary slips over a long duration (all of my work period of 3 years but the last few months before I went on maternity) despite me bringing it to their notice (email proofs) due to which I was unable to obtain a work permit for myself and had to depend on them to continue employing me to enable me to work in UK.

Is my case totally hopeless? Employer made good benefit from my contract work and refused to extend my work permit which in the past they had done several times, as they knew that as new mother it may take me some time before getting a foothold in the job market.

viktory

green_chilly wrote: »

I did not provide in writing, but we were in touch over phone mainly and there is an email in which I sent them reminder about filling my taxes as the tax year was near completion.

Also, I think can prove that it was due to my being away on maternity that caused them to terminate my employment because they as such do not have work for me in their office but depend on me to procure work for myself from jobsearch in open market. They are a UK based company run by Indian nationals and the head HR sits in India so perhaps they did not have complete knowledge of UK laws and had initially refused me my complete maternity entitlements as I too am Indian national. They gave in only after I provided them with links about UK laws for which I have emails proof.

Employer used my upcoming visa renewel as reason to terminate employment without serving me with written notice.
In addition, they had been giving me wrong salary slips over a long duration (all of my work period of 3 years but the last few months before I went on maternity) despite me bringing it to their notice (email proofs) due to which I was unable to obtain a work permit for myself and had to depend on them to continue employing me to enable me to work in UK.

Is my case totally hopeless? Employer made good benefit from my contract work and refused to extend my work permit which in the past they had done several times, as they knew that as new mother it may take me some time before getting a foothold in the job market.

It is not for me to say if your case is totally hopeless, I am not an employment expert. It is your case and therefore it is for you to decide if you actually have a case not only worth fighting but one you have a chance of winning. From what you have written on here though, it sounds like you have little written evidence and I know you have no solicitor to help. Your former employers do appear to be holding all the cards. You could have been treated hideously badly, but unless you can prove it, you don't stand a chance.

I would strongly urge you to try and find the money to seek at least one consultation with an employment lawyer (some even offer a thirty minute consult for free). S/he should be able to tell you if you have a case or not.

green_chilly

I am not residing in UK so have had difficulty in getting legal advice as the ones that I had retained online did provide me with helpful inputs in putting together my ET1 response but were very difficult to work with and did not respond when I asked them questions.

Anyway, my statement exchange date is mid of this week so need to do all what I can by myself.

Based on the inputs given here I have included reasons about why my employers did not want me back as they never wanted to in the first place give me maternity leave (proof provided). In response to my grieviance raised with me they had also mentioned that after my work visa had expired they would have had to sponsor me further then they would have had to employ me afresh and instead they would have gone for company transfer from their India operations. On it's own this argument seems to be valid. But the fact that even though they did know my visa was due to expire they did not give me written notice when in their response to my grieviance they have themselves said about me needing to give them formal notice of my forwarding address. I have proofs that I had indeed givng them formal notice regarding my whearabout and forwarding address. Also, their mentioning about not considering me over internal employee transfer from overseas. Thus putting all the peices together a picture emerge of them not wanting to employ me as soon as I told them about my maternity leave. All this because I was a billable consultant for them and not regular office staff.

I have also raised ET1 issue of them not providing me with salary slips and at other times providing me incorrect salary slips about which I have consistently raised issue both in written and verbal over the last year of my employment, due to which I was not able to sponsor my own work permit and had to work for them. In fact I have proofs that provide that the salary slips given to me right from start of my employment about 4 years back to as recent as last year of my employment were incorrect. Can that have negative legal consequence for me in that I should have raised this issue more strongly?

maddal1ne

I feel for your situation and believe that you should continue your fight. If you dont win you will at least feel like you tried and did the right thing. I do not think that it is right for people to tell you to give up just because you are inexperienced or naive to court processes! The Employment Tribunals understand this.
I am also in a position where I am taking my ex employer to court and have been unable to obtain legal aid and therefore I am doing it myself. I exchanged my information at the same time as they did and now they have produced a joint bundle without me having to ask them to. However, call me paranoid, I dont trust anyone and having looked through the joint bundle I am not happy with the format and have therefore asked them to change it.
I would be interested in knowing how you got on as you posted your thread in March I presume the case has been and gone.
Dealing with a court case yourself is hard work and I have had to read through many "Acts" including the Employment Tribunals Act 1966, but the information is there if you are prepared to work hard!

zzzLazyDaisy

green_chilly wrote: »

I have an Employment Tribunal hearing coming up for unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination as new mother against my employer. According to the orders we have to prepare a joint bundle of documents. I would like to know if it is claimant's responsibility to prepare the bundle or it is a shared responsibility.

The tribunal issue Directions telling you what you need to do and by what date. So this is the first thing you should check.

However, the normal procedure is that each party must disclose to the other a list of all relevant documents in their possession by a certain date. Many of the documents will already have been seen by both parties (correspondence, contract documents, etc) but if there are any docs on the list that the other party hasn't seen, copies should be provided.

Once this process has been completed (known as discovery and disclosure) then both parties will have a full set of all the documents.

The Respondent's solicitor is then normally expected to prepare a paginated bundle of documents for use at the hearing, and to forward a copy to the claimant. This is standard practice.

hth

EDIT - having now read the full thread, I am concerned to note that you are not living in the UK and your visa appears to have expired. You also say that you do not think you would cope with cross examination. You do understand that you will need to come to the UK and attend the hearing in person, don't you? Although you can submit your statements and documents, the tribunal will place little weight on them if you are not there to give your evidence under oath and respond to questions (cross-examination).