Employment Tribunal Reform proposals ('Employer's Charter')

zzzLazyDaisy

First apologies if this has already been posted - I did a search but didn't find anything.

Summary of the proposals announced today by David Cameron and Vince Cable:

• the employee to pay a fee to lodge a claim to an employment tribunal
• compulsory mediation through ACAS for all tribunal claims
• increase in unfair dismissal qualifying period from one year to two years
• employment judges to sit alone (presumably meaning in all cases, not just the jurisdictions where they currently can/do)

They will also introduce an Employer's Charter, which will remind employers of their rights, such as the right to ask an employee to take annual leave at a time that suits the business, the right to ask staff to take a pay cut and the right to dismiss poorly performing staff.

Further info here http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/jan/27/politics-live-blog

Edited to add - these are just proposals, the chances are that any eventual reform will be watered down, and won't be introduced for some time, but still worth watching (for both employers and employees)

Googlewhacker

The fee is definately the big one for me, it doesn't have to be alot but it will be enough to lessen the malicious claims against companies.

The rest I'm non plussed about, the 2 years would be good for employers but tbf 99% of the time you realise if an employee is intentionally taking the mick within a year.

November5th

The compulsory mediation through ACAS is good, my ex employer made no attempts to mediate at all, a fact that will not be lost on the tribunal.
My ex employer will be punished for this, it isn't always the claimants who are vexatious.

zzzLazyDaisy

Googlewhacker wrote: »

The rest I'm non plussed about, the 2 years would be good for employers but tbf 99% of the time you realise if an employee is intentionally taking the mick within a year.

To be honest, I can't see it happening.

Unfair dismissal service requirement was originally 6 months. In 1985 the requirement was increased to two years - but it was reduced to the present one year in 1989, after a legal challenge to the ECJ.

The argument then was that proportionately fewer women than men are able to achieve the two year service requirement. I doubt that much has changed in the meantime, so if this government does make this change, I expect the TUC will immediately fund a test case (as they did the last time). Some people have short memories.

zzzLazyDaisy

November5th wrote: »

The compulsory mediation through ACAS is good, my ex employer made no attempts to mediate at all, a fact that will not be lost on the tribunal.

A voluntary version of this scheme was trialled in the late 90's. It was a massive flop because the employee could still go to tribunal if they didn't like the outcome (which is still part of the proposals), and also ACAS were given no extra funding to carry out this role so any cases that did go to mediation took aged to work through the system.

Although there were no fees for the service, there was still a cost to employers in terms of obtaining legal advice on the merits and prospects of success of a case, getting the paperwork together, and the inconvenience of dealing with the process, with no guarantee that the employee wouldn't just go to tribunal at the end of it anyway.

As a corporate solicitor advising companies, I advised my clients not to agree to any requests for mediation. But in fact we did not have a single request anyway. The whole scheme died a silent death, as I recall.

The only difference with these new proposals is that going through the mediation process will be compulsory. It will slow down the rate at which claims get to tribunal (annual statistics will show fewer claims going to tribunal = success of the new system) but will create a bottle neck elsewhere, with probably not a lot of effect on the overall eventual numbers getting to tribunal in the end.

Why do I say this? Because ACAS already carry out a concilliation process to try and get people to settle and avoid going to a full tribunal hearing - albeit by telephone. Many cases do settle. Where an employer is determined to be obstructive, this will just play into their hands as it will give them more opportunities to delay any conclusion of the case.

But I'm a cynic.

Googlewhacker

November5th wrote: »

The compulsory mediation through ACAS is good, my ex employer made no attempts to mediate at all, a fact that will not be lost on the tribunal.
My ex employer will be punished for this, it isn't always the claimants who are vexatious.

Yes quite, but at the moment there is no cost to someone claiming against an employer and if it is malicious then they could cost the company to defend, the fact that it may cost £50 (random figure) might make them think twice.

zzzLazyDaisy

Googlewhacker wrote: »

Yes quite, but at the moment there is no cost to someone claiming against an employer and if it is malicious then they could cost the company to defend, the fact that it may cost £50 (random figure) might make them think twice.

I agree, although I wonder how it will pan out in practice.

The county court has a fee exemption for people on means tested benefits. I'd be surprised if this wasn't also introduced in the tribunal reforms too. By definition, someone claiming unfair dismissal has a reasonably high prospect of still being out of work 3 months later (the time limit for lodging the claim) so a lot of claimants would be fee exempt anyway.