08th September 2010
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- Unions hot under the collar
- Tribunal claims rise further and staff who fabricate claims against employers liable for costs
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Tribunal claims rise further and staff who fabricate claims against employers liable for costs
New figures show the effect of the recession in increasing Tribunal applications but a ruling from the EAT gives some hope to employers facing unreasonable claims.
As reported previously (People Matters ) the recession is driving claims to Tribunals up in any event and figures from Keith Mizon, Director of Individual Dispute Resolution at Acas show that the trend line is sharpening. Quoting figures which show individual requests for conciliation increasing by more than 20% in the last quarter of 2008 over a year previously and nearly 8% higher than in the previous quarter, Mizon says that the rate of increase is accelerating. “In the last big downturn, employment claims rose by 57% in the first year.” said Mizon. “That may not happen this time, but clearly when people are losing their jobs, more of them complain about the circumstances in which it happened.”
One such complainant, Mrs Cynlet Mathew, has been ordered to meet the legal costs of defence incurred by her employer, a care home who successfully defended her charges of racists and discriminatory remarks made by her manager. Mathew claimed that her boss had called her a “black bitch” but the Tribunal found that the phrase had not been used, deciding instead that the allegation was ‘unreasonable and fabricated’. When the nursing home applied for costs on the grounds of her unreasonable behaviour, the EAT agreed, creating a precedent that desperate employers will be keen to use hereafter.
