NUJ Glasgow Branch NEWS: Employers ignore tribunal without teeth

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Employers ignore tribunals without teeth
The NUJ will this week hit out at the refusal of Government Ministers to force companies to reinstate workers who have been been unfairly dismissed. The call for action comes in the wake of Aberdeen Press and Journals' failure to reinstate Eugenie Verney despite an Employment Tribunal order to do so. The tribunal had found that AP&J had dismissed Eugenie unfairly. Now members of the NUJ's Parliamentary Group will call on Employment Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, to act. Mike Hancock, vice-chair of the NUJ's Parliamentary Group, has already questioned the Government on its failure to introduce legislation necessary to enforce reinstatement orders. NUJ MPs have also tried to move an amendment to current employment legislation after being briefed about Eugenie's case. A letter to be delivered to Mr Sutcliffe will call for action to address "the scandal of those who flout tribunal decisions to reinstate". NUJ leaders are also set to raise the issue at this year's Trades Union Congress in Brighton in September. NUJ General Secretary, Jeremy Dear, said: "This case is a blatant example of how the law is biased in favour of employers. They can sack people without good reason, be found guilty, be ordered to reinstate them, refuse, claim the employment relationship has broken down and then face nothing more than a paltry fine. "If the Government are serious about fairness at work they need to change the law to protect individuals from being victimised. The remedy for unfair dismissal should be reinstatement - anything less is a charter for continued abuses. "The Scottish TUC has already taken up this case and we will be calling on the TUC to use it as a prime piece of evidence for their campaign to secure improved employment rights and put an end to the impunity with which too many media employers are able to act".
20/07/04
The background Eugenie Verney was Mother of Chapel at Aberdeen Journals where she worked. She was 'made redundant' within a week of an announcement that a redundancy selection exercise would take place even though the company was advertising vacancies for similar jobs. Backing her claim of unfair dismissial, in July 2003 the Employment Tribunal issued a reinstatement order but the company failed to comply. In February 2004, an Employment Tribunal remedy hearing withdrew the reinstatement order on the grounds that "the employment relationship had irretrievably broken down". Eugenie received no additional award and only nominal amounts for loss of pension. There is no mechanism to enforce a reinstatement order. The Employment Relations Act 1996 goes in to great details about what tribunals should specify when ordering reinstatement but gives them no powers of enforcement. Effectively this means that reinstatement orders, already very rare (only eight were issued last year), are not worth the paper they are written on. Eugenie would have been awarded far more compensatory money had the tribunal simply upheld the unfair dismissal claim without a reinstatement order in July 2003. Instead she has been let down twice. A simple change to the law is needed which would mean employers must respect and act on reinstatement orders within a strict timetable or face real, punitive sanctions.

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All items on this site by Bernard Thompson unless otherwise indicated.

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