Being abused, harassed or discriminated against is one of the worst things you can experience at work. Suffering this kind of treatment can be emotionally scarring and can wreck people’s careers.
Wronged staff are able to seek justice against bad bosses through the tribunal system. But thanks to new fees of up to £1,200 introduced last year by the government, taking an employer to court has got a lot more expensive.
Unsurprisingly, the introduction of fees has led to a sharp fall in the number of cases. Around 1,200 women made a sex discrimination claim in the first three months of 2014 – barely a fifth of the 6,000 cases taken during the same period in 2013. Other types of discrimination cases are down too – sexual orientation and race discrimination cases are down 60 per cent, while disability discrimination cases are down 46 per cent.
There are three possible – and only one plausible – explanations for this fall.
Firstly, Britain’s bosses could have got much nicer in the last year. Let’s face it, no one believes that.
Secondly, the government say that fees have prevented vexatious claims. But employers can already apply to the tribunal to strike out weak and vexatious claims.
According to the government’s logic, the majority of cases pre summer 2013 actually involved dastardly employees tying their employers in red tape with bogus claims about being sacked while on maternity leave, being racially abused at work and not being paid their proper wages.
Anyone who lives in the real world will know that the exact reverse is true. Most of us know of many more people that have been mistreated at work than have actually taken their employer to court. The tribunal system has always represented the tip of the iceberg in terms of discrimination at work. That tip has got even smaller thanks to tribunal fees.
The only plausible explanation for the sharp fall in tribunal cases is that the introduction of fees has priced people out of seeking justice. Indeed, research published on Monday by Citizens Advice found that seven in 10 potentially successful cases are not pursued by people at tribunals. Only one in seven people with valid claims are definitely being taken forward.
The government has sought to soften the blow of tribunal fees by introducing a remission scheme with the aim of ensuring those who cannot afford fees can still access justice. Predictably, the remission scheme has failed – just one in four people applying for financial assistance has actually received any. One of the key limitations of the scheme is that fact anyone with household savings of £3,000 or more is ineligible for any help. This threshold bars, for example, one in three households with at least one minimum wage worker from receiving any financial assistance. When you consider that the fees alone for taking an unpaid wages claim is equivalent to over 60 hours of work on the minimum wage, not to mention the costs of legal representation, it is easy to see how hard it has become for wronged employees to seek justice in the courts.
The TUC wants tribunal fees to be abolished. But for workers worried that one day they may have to face these fees, the best way to avoid finding yourself in an expensive tribunal claim is by joining a union. Hundreds of thousands of reps across the country work tirelessly to resolve problems in the workplace before they even reach the courts. And while the introduction of fees has dramatically reduced the number of tribunal cases, unions continue to support members who need to seek justice through the legal system.
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Hannah Reed is senior employment rights expert at the TUC
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The author mentions that the remissions scheme has failed. Too true it has and it is not just because some claimants have savings of more than £3000. I certainly don’t have any savings. I recently had an Employment Appeal Tribunal application struck out for non-payment of the £450 lodgement fee after my remission application was refused and then two appeals and an intervention by my MP were all rejected in short order.
Firstly, the initial refusal was accompanied by a request for further evidence. What sort of assessment system turns down a claim and requires that submission of further requested evidence be processed as an appeal?
Secondly the decision at first appeal was a manifestation of what I can only call organised stupidity. I had sent evidence, in the form of the DWP decision letter, that I am not in receipt of Jobseekers Allowance because I have a small occupational pension. This was dated in August 2013. I had also sent, at the insistence of the officer who refused my original application, a further 3 months bank statements in addition to the 3 I had already supplied. The manager at the Employment Tribunal fees office who then considered this further evidence as an appeal, rejected it stating that my December bank statement showed that I was in receipt of Jobseekers Allowance. It actually showed a single payment of £100, referenced as ‘JCP WFP’. It was my one off Winter Fuel Payment. Another supplied bank statement showed a payment of the same amount being received by my wife, albeit with a different payment reference because she is in receipt of her state pension, whereas I was still registed as unemployed with Jobcentre Plus in the WFP qualifying month, September 2013.
First appeal rejected, with me having to resort to explaining what the £100 bank credit constituted by way of submission of my second appeal.
The second appeal was a fiasco, upholding the decision at first appeal, despite my having explained how Winter Fuel payments are paid and the references against the payment in the bank statement. The reason for rejection was that my original evidence letter proving that I was not in receipt of JSA was dated more than a month before my remission application!!
The appeals of course are not dealt with by a tribunal but by two successive tiers of managers at the Employment Tribunal Fees office! In other words, the managers responsible for running a service that delivers incompetent decisions, hear appeals against those decisions. A perversity!
Great article. Thanks for the info. Does anyone know where I can find a blank claim unpaid wages form to fill out?