Employees (or, rather, ex-employees) don’t have an easy time at tribunal and there are few true cases of injustice against the employer. Employers need to know the correct employment procedures and, if they don’t, there are plenty of advisers out there who will help. There is no excuse for an employer to fall foul of the law. Employment law comes about in response to poor and dubious employment practices. If we start scrapping employment law then where do we stop?

On the subject of “social responsibility” I would say it is NOT simply about making people “happy” - it is about being a good employer, a responsible provider of quality goods and services, and a good neighbour (which includes helping to protect the environment).

I have yet to meet a boss who gets rid of good staff. In our company we really do all the good stuff to attract and keep good staff. The problem is that we could do a whole lot more for good staff if we were not burdonned with professional loosers. I hate to use such derogatory language but we all know colleagues who think the world owes them a living and if they spent as much time and effort on productive work rather than avoiding it they’d be high flyers themselves.

We have a woman (with a disabilty) who is never late for work, rarely absent and is a hard worker. Last year we had a bit of snow on the ground and a couple of loosers (able bodied) could not get to work because of the snow - yet our woman with a disability passed all their houses on her way to work - arriving on time as usual.

If getting shut of loosers in firms was easier there would not be so many of them as they would have to perform. We could start halting the exodus of businesses to elsewhere in the world and decent hard working folk, UK plc, bosses and unions would have a more productive life.

Yes there are bad bosses but there are also bad employees and bad unions.

I have had union reps threaten to have a site out of strike because we dared to suggest that we would arrange a presentation to advise the employees what their rights were under TUPE. If I was being transferred I would be grateful that the company were going to tell me my rights and even where to go (ACAS,CAB) to get information to verify what they had told me

Yes there is a need for rules but most of the recent legislation has been drafted by someone with Key Stage 1 knowledge of employment law. (for those that don’t know Key Stage 1 is the first level of education in a Primary School)

As for the Tribunals themselves many of those that are on them are a complete waste of space. I attended one tribunal where we sacked some for not wearing safety shoes and he admitted that due to his medical problem we had offered to buy a second pair in a larger size as his feet swelled. It was found that we had not acted reasonably by not buying the shoes for him.

Our view was that if he went to the shop in our time when he did have his medical problem he would get shoes that fitted> Am I missing something or is that not a reasonable answer. Not according to the Tribunals it’s not. It sounds as bad as the judge last week who stop a trial because he didn’t know what a website was.

I am aware of one Tribunal that was so bad that both the employer and employee put in complaints. The only thing they did agree on.

In another case the claim was for failing to consult prior to a TUPE transfer and the Tribunal deemed it necessary for there to be a pre-hearing to establish what the claim was for. I would have thought that failure to consult prior to a TUPE transfer was quite self explanatory.

Bring back common sense

We had an IT guy who attended our site an average of 104 days per year for 7 years. He kept his own records of when he was sick when he was on holiday when he was working so called time lieu.

When I came in to the business (the elderly owner was retiring) I tried to normalise the situation (there had been no contract but the ptevious owner was admament that the It guy should have bene working 5 days per week)and asked him how he saw his position so thate we could create a contract and work together. He refused and went sick.

We carried on paying him - everytime I phoned he said I was harrasing him. This went on for 3 months. We offered him to continue as he was working for 1 more year but after that we would expect him to leave.

He then resigned claiming unfair dismissal.
Went to a tribunal and we lost and was ordered to pay him a whole years salary plus compensation.

He has refused to supply passwords or any documentation or details of any procedures.

At the trubunal he would break down in tears it turned out before he worked for us he had been unemployed for 5 years and before that he had been in and out of jobs, The welfare state and compensation culture is creating people like him - and actually keeping them down though he and his type will never see it.

Being rational about it, what we have to do is to try and persuade a government, some time, to rationalise and rein in the crazy laws. What might work is abolishing the ‘no costs’ rule in Tribunals, as well.

My favourite pet hate - maternity rights etc. It might be easy for Tesco to cover a year’s absence by checkout girls, but it’s impossible if you run a business requiring close relationships with customers, or high skill from employees. 6 months off was one thing, but a year! Plus ‘holiday’! Plus parental leave. Crackers!

I am a Personnel Manager and for some years (during which time I have represented and won two dozen tribunals, on both “sides”) I have noticed how the tribunal system and unfair dismissal laws tend to work to the advantage of two groups alone - (ex) employees with no legitimate claim and lawyers.

Consider the economics of it - if you are an employer who has done no wrong but are facing a tribunal claim, to fight it and win might start of at a cost of around £10,000 in legal fees. Much better then to pay off the claimant for, say, £5,000 and save yourself some costs and a lot of time and hassle - never mind the baseless claim they might be making.

On the other side, if you are a truly aggrieved employee, unfairly hounded out of your livelihood by an arrogant, pernicious employer, you may get a lawyer to represent you on a “no-win, no-fee” basis, but if you do win, you are unlikely to win very much at all. Average tribunal payouts are barely touching £5,000 - some compensation for the loss of your livelihood by foul means. Especially given the stress of making a claim and the subsequent tag of “troublemaker” which blights your future employment.

So the answer?

To me, there should be more screening out at an earlier stage of claims with no real merit; the Government promsied this but did not deliver. But on the other hand, if an employer is found to have unfairly dismissed someone, they should have to pay substantial and punitive costs which might make them take a less cavalier attitude to staff in the future. Employers have plenty of comeback already, to answer Mr Ellis’ bizarre question (doesn’t he know this?), if an employee is unsuitable - there is no protection fo the first twelve months of employment, which should be long enough for any decent employer to work out how good their new recruit is; and after that, they can still dismiss as long as they do so using fairly basic procedures - fair dismissal is always permitted!

Mr Ellis’ blog is badly misguided in attributing the success of the nation to wealth alone - that might be the yardstick used by shareholders, but any survey of people’s motivations (and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) shows security to come far ahead. It is the marginalisation of many people in our so-called enterprise culture today which has provided a breeding ground for everything from crime, drugs and the rise of the BNP. We are no longer a nation at ease with ourselves, and removing this pretty minimal level of protection to people in the workplace (where the utterly overwhelming majority of us are employees) would aggravate further the sense of alienation of some of the most economically vulnerable people in our country.

The system demands reform so that unfair dismissal law is fairly enforced; not thrown to the wolves of aggressive, self-serving, unfettered free market capitalism.