Going to an employment tribunal - advice needed.

SarEl

lazarus888 wrote: »

Can I respectfully ask that certain posters take their arguments elsewhere amd that a mod cleans up my thread.

Many thanks.

Ive now got my employers ET3, it came in the post this morning.

the et3 states that there can be no covering letters. my former employers representatives have attached their legal document 'grounfs of resistence' to the back of the et3 and have input nothing other than 'please see grounds for resistence' on the et3 part 5.2. is this allowed or is the gfr not classed as a covering letter?

the gfr also makes mention of 'polkey v ae dayton services [1987] icr 142' in relation to my dismissal in that if the tribunal find that my dismissal was procedureally infair i would have been dismissed anyway. This seems like a contradiction?? can a previous tribunal result influence mine??

fuerther to the above, they have also said that as i have received a 'compensation payment' for leaving the pension scheme and being dismissed for unsatisfactory attendance and award of compensation (made by the tribunal) should be offset. is this an admission of liability?

they also havnt responded by way of explanation or defense to 18 of the points ive raised in the et1. i find this particularly odd as these points include not seeing supporting evidence of the reason given for my dismissal.

And could I respectfullu point out that the quality of the advice on legal matters on this thread and elsewhere is highly relevant to your thread, since you are not asking for opinions - you are asking about the law?

There is nothing at all strange about their argument and they are not admitting any liabaility. What they are saying is that they do not accept that they acted unfairly in dismissing you; that if they did, then a precedural error did not change what would have been the only possible outcome anyway; and that you received some payments for the nature of your dismissal anyway, so if an award is made against them that should be taken into account. This is a perfectly legitimate and measured response.

They are not required to respond to what you have claimed in your ET1 - this is not legal argument. It is there response to the court - not to you.

I have already said that you had no right to see any supporting evidence in relation to the reason for your dismissal. The law gives you the right to a written reason for your dismissal - it does not give you the right to the evidence justifying that decision. Their explanation of their reasons is a matter for the tribunal now, but I think you fail to appreciate that tribunals will have little intetest in most of this. The employer has made a business decision that they cannot sustain prolonged sickness absence, and the tribunal cannot and will not examine a business decision. They do not have the right to replace the employers judgement on this matter with their own. The tribunals concern is with the immediate facts - the absence management process and whether or not your absence was handled appropriately with that regard. You need to be careful that the thrust of your argument is not on matters which the tribunal cannot consider - it wouldn't be the first time that I have seen self-representing claimants erroneously arguing matters which have no relevance in law and missing out those that do!

I also do not recall you mentioing previously that you received any payment in compensation of your dismissal. This is a very material fact. It will almost certainly reduce the level of any award that might be made, notwithstanding any other argument about a Polkey deduction.

lazarus888

the advice i receive here is HUGELY appreciated but i appear to have been caught in the middle of a board argument between well established posters. but anyway......

im going to argue that the way in which i was dismissed was more than a single or series procedural errors. the entire process, from start to finish was flawed. the attendance management policy wasnt even agreed with the workforce or the union, not that they followed their own guidelines anyway...

by not sending me supporting evidence of their reason for dismissal surely that is unfair? after all, how would i be able to challenge it or even respond in any way??

lazarus888

Any advice on how I should approach my opening statement? any examples online?

Emmzi

you know, I'd typed a reply, and then I thought, sod it, he won't listen. Because while you are making "thank you" noises you aren't actually listening to what anyone is telling you. The information you need has already been posted.

You do not have a strong and clearcut position. You are not well informed enough to dance about the finer points of the law.

give it up or PAY A LAWYER.

lazarus888

Emmzi wrote: »

You do not have a strong and clearcut position.

As you are not in posession of all the facts in my case I am unsure how you can state this....unless your my former boss.

But thank you for your advice anyway - it is appreciated. there is no harm in me asking for help here.

jobbingmusician

1. Google 'polkey reduction'

2. Try reading Employment Tribunal Help (and quite a few other threads on this forum) to learn more about tribunal procedure and your opening statement.

KiKi

lazarus888 wrote: »

by not sending me supporting evidence of their reason for dismissal surely that is unfair? after all, how would i be able to challenge it or even respond in any way??

You are not listening. They are only required to tell you WHY they dismissed you. They do NOT have to give you evidence to back it up. That may feel unfair to you, but it's not unlawfully unfair; there's a huge difference.

You have to respond as to why you think they have acted unlawfully. And the ET will rule on that, not whether or not the business decision to dismiss you was nice or not.

KiKi

SarEl

Emmzi wrote: »

you know, I'd typed a reply, and then I thought, sod it, he won't listen. Because while you are making "thank you" noises you aren't actually listening to what anyone is telling you. The information you need has already been posted.

You do not have a strong and clearcut position. You are not well informed enough to dance about the finer points of the law.

give it up or PAY A LAWYER.

I appreciate that the OP doesn't want to disclose too much (although there isn't quite such as fine a line between too much and almost nothing as the OP seems to think), but I do have to support Emmzi in saying once again that seeking some form of professional advice on this matter - even just to help focus the argument being made - is really quite important.

OP, it appears fairly clear that you have misunderstood some aspects of the law (we have after all said several times now that your were only entitled to the reason for dismissal, not evidence of the evidence) and jurisdiction. You appear to have little idea of tribunal process - you do not even need to give any thought to writing an opening statement since you have only just got your employers ET3 back - and this stage you may not even get as far as making an opening statement! And there appears to be some details that are relevant as to copmpensation which may have been paid already that may make the entire exercise not worth the time and effgoprt anyway.

Now as a self-representing client you may not be expected to know these sorts of things in detail - but you are still expected to know something of these matters and to address yourself to the point. The trubunal will guide you through confusion - they won't sort out these sorts of matters for you.

Please do as suggested and get some legal advice. If you can't/won't talk to people here, you need to do so elsewhere. because you could, if you have a case at all, blow it!

lazarus888

KiKi wrote: »

You are not listening. They are only required to tell you WHY they dismissed you. They do NOT have to give you evidence to back it up. That may feel unfair to you, but it's not unlawfully unfair; there's a huge difference.

You have to respond as to why you think they have acted unlawfully. And the ET will rule on that, not whether or not the business decision to dismiss you was nice or not.

KiKi

my employer dismissed me for - and i quote - 'your continued absence is having an adverse effect on business delivery'.

when I asked for evidence of this adverse effect at appeal, the appeal manager said - and i quote - 'there is no documentary evidence recorded specific to yourself'.

so if the evidence does not exist why was i dismissed?

and just for the record - legal advice will be sought. im simply trying to get an idea of what im getting into from people who have been here before me but i appear to have walked into the middle of some sort of longrunning board argument that is very offputting tbh.

Jarndyce

lazarus888 wrote: »

my employer dismissed me for - and i quote - 'your continued absence is having an adverse effect on business delivery'.

when I asked for evidence of this adverse effect at appeal, the appeal manager said - and i quote - 'there is no documentary evidence recorded specific to yourself'.

so if the evidence does not exist why was i dismissed?

and just for the record - legal advice will be sought. im simply trying to get an idea of what im getting into from people who have been here before me but i appear to have walked into the middle of some sort of longrunning board argument that is very offputting tbh.

I am not going to get involved in any name-calling but you really need to understand this.

You were dismissed for unsatisfactory attendance. That is all the tribunal will need to know. They do not care that there was no evidence provided to you for the impact on the business, because whether or not there was any impact, that is still a fair reason for dismissal. The tribunal will not be interested in the business impact either - they are only interested in whether dismissal was within the range of reasonable responses in the specific circumstances of your case. And it clearly is in that range.

And even if they failed to follow their own procedures, even to teh extent which renders your dismissal technically unfair, the tribunal will look at whether, if they had followed them, the outcome would have been the same. If they judge that it would have been, then they can reduce any compensation under Polkey, maybe even to zero. I don't understand exactly what your pension compensation payment was for, but they could possibly deduct that also.

So the likelihood is, even if you 'win' your case, you will get next to nothing. Best you can hope for in my view is to secure a commercial settlement (ie a payment of less than the legal costs would be) to make you go away.

Hope that helps.