The proposed fee is punitive: it is around ten times more than it would cost to issue a similar claim in the county courts, on which the tribunals are modelled.
To understand the sheer malice of the announcement, it must be borne in mind that over a third of all tribunal claims in any year are claims for unpaid wages. Many involve employers simply refusing to pay their workers the wages that are owed to them. Around 70 percent of wages claims are won by the workers bringing them.
The ground was prepared with the help of a press campaign to the effect that most tribunal claims are vexatious (but around 60 percent of all claims, whether for wages, unfair dismissal or discrimination, succeed at a final hearing) and that the claimants are rogue former employees receiving pay-outs in several tens of thousands (the median award in dismissal claims is less than £5,000). Meanwhile, other proposals are anticipated to extend the time that an employee has to be in work before they can bring an unfair dismissal claim to two years, and to make it easier for companies to require unsuccessful claimants to pay the employer’s legal costs.
The tribunal system is far from perfect. Its over-reliance on litigation pushes power upwards in a union and away from the rank and file. Prospects are better when workers strike to prevent dismissals or discrimination.
That said, the proposals will reduce tribunal litigation on the bosses’ terms. Osborne’s message to employers is simple: don’t pay your workers – they won’t be able to afford to sue you.
Dave Renton
In November of last year, there was a brief moment of light amid the darkness that was 2020. Scotland became the first country in the world to make period products free for all. Just as the weekend and the eight-hour-day are now regarded by many as a given, future generations may be in disbelief that...
On 4 November last year, when many of us were watching the aftermath of the American presidential election, the US formally left the Paris Climate Agreement. Written in 2015 at the United Nations’ COP21 climate conference in Paris, the agreement is often considered to be the most significant document of international climate cooperation. Back then,...
To say 2020 was dramatic would be an understatement. The world situation has been completely transformed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the inadequacy of governmental and state responses. As we head into 2021 it feels like we are entering uncharted territory. To make specific predictions would be unwise. But the Covid-19 crisis raises fundamental questions...
The 2020 crisis we’ve endured isn’t an aberration of the system but, as Alex Callinicos argues, an aspect of its permanent crisis.
