employment tribunals

[La Poste]

Financial compensation consists of:

(i) a Basic Award, the current maximum of which from 01 February 2009 is £10,500 that is based on a maximum week’s pay of £350 x 30 = £10,500;

(ii) a Compensatory Award that has no limit on a week’s pay but is capped at £66,200.

A maximum of £10,500, that's gone down. So it's still a cheap way of getting rid of someone.
I'm talking about RM cobbling together a conduct case and sacking you.
All you can argue is that they reached the wrong conclusions from the evidence available, if you win you will probably not be re-instated and get a maximum of £10,500 minus whatever the tribunal decides is the amount that you are responsible for the conduct case going in the first place.
But at least you get your day in court.

[La Poste]

Right, I have been doing a bit more reading on this subject and have an opinion.
The Tribunal system has changed recently, in the old days the tribunal used to decide if your employer was unfair in sacking you due to the facts of the case against you (IE the tribunal would try to take the place of your employer in looking at the evidence and compare the decision they would arrive at to the decision your employer arrived at), now it seems the tribunal is not too bothered if you feel the evidence available to the comapny at the time of your sacking did not justify your dismissal they are more interested in the proceedure of the sacking. If you were sacked because someone alleged you did something wrong the tribunal will not focus on this as much as focus on whether your sacking was carried out after a proper investigation in line with ACAS guidelines.
The tribunal will not try to substitute itself as your employer and ask whether it was reasonable to sack you they will simply investigate whether your company followed the correct proceedure in sacking you.
I got this opinion from these two links.
http://66.102.9.132/search?q=cache:X016 ... =firefox-a
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2000/3030.html
So if you want to bring a case for tribunal it is best to concentrate on whether RM followed it's own conduct code in line with ACAS guidelines in dismissing you.
I can't see what harm it would do to bring up lack of evidence in the decision to sack you but don't rely on that fact to win.

Interesting to note the case involving the post office V Foley, the guy was sacked for going home before his duty time had finished even though his manager had said he was allowed, the decision of dismissal was upheld by the court.
The scarey thing is that it seems to give employers a lot more lee way in interpreting whether you are guilty of a charge of misconduct as this guilty verdict will not be questioned so much at the tribunal now. So IMO it gives RM the power to sack you on trumped up charges as long as they follow the correct proceedures, for instance all RM will need is for someone to put in a complaint about you, so be careful out there.

[sharonbar]

i put my it form in on the 5th jan i then recived confermation to say the have recived it an rm have 28 days to respond so will that be from the day i put the it form in or from the it sending them my information im getting no help at all

[La Poste]

Don't know Sharon.
Here's some bits and pieces from the CWU website if anyone's interested.

CWU Defending Our Members - Past Cases:
http://66.102.9.132/search?q=cache:_oNW ... =firefox-a

[norbert]

'' Jan Zablocki from North Midlands branch said, “Look at Alan Johnson when he was at the department of employment. On a very concrete issue – employment tribunals – he let us down

“He had a chance to help us, but he made the process even more difficult for workers and allowed employers to take punitive measures in response to our members’ claims.

“He chose to pursue his own career. Good luck to him, but he doesn’t do it with our blessing.” From http://www.socialistworker.org.uk/art.php?id=11839" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I remember reading that had said 1 . There was far too many Tribunals taken out 2 . There was too many " weak " cases apparently 3 . The idea was in theory to sort things out by ACAS conciliation and avoid tribunals .

There must have been some lobbying from the CBI and the desire to be seen as Business Friendly - they would argue the employee has too many rights and I've heard some " extreme " , forthright views about Tribunals from high profile figures .

Our friend Alan Johnson again

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/pbc/2001- ... 12-11a.3.0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

" The Government were willing to back down on a proposal that they had strongly defended and previously had said was predicted to save British business as much as £70 million in litigation costs. They were prepared to do that before hearing everything that people had to say during the consultation process. That is an additional stealth tax of £70 million imposed on British business by the Government "