Any advice for employment tribunals?

[Mortlake]

Which Legal Service & Co-Operative.co.uk Legal Service

Glad it went OK. For anyone reading this later-on:
-http://www.whichlegalservice.co.uk/ gives telephone help for £12 a quarter. They use specialist employment lawyers who sound as though they do face-to-face work as well as the telephone work for Which?, so they're worth the £12 even though you can't show them the documents.
-http://www.co-operative.co.uk/joinnow gives a similar free legal telephone advice once you've joined, which is also free. The lawyers aren't so specialised.

Similar links on my site http://www.employees.org.uk

 

[Guineveretoo]

I am not sure of your motives in posting up that link to your website, which is clearly anti union, picking out the instances when things have gone wrong, and failing to acknowledge the good work that unions have done when they have not failed their members!

It is misleading and unhelpful, in that respect.

IMHO, of course.

I am not going to read the rest of your site, because that section irritated me so much!

ETA Okay, I have just looked at your other posts, and realise that you are simply spamming this anti union website, so I am glad I didn't waste any time reading it.

 

[Loupylou]

I am not sure of your motives in posting up that link to your website, which is clearly anti union, picking out the instances when things have gone wrong, and failing to acknowledge the good work that unions have done when they have not failed their members!

It is misleading and unhelpful, in that respect.

IMHO, of course.

I am not going to read the rest of your site, because that section irritated me so much!

ETA Okay, I have just looked at your other posts, and realise that you are simply spamming this anti union website, so I am glad I didn't waste any time reading it.

FFS drop the weights off your eyes - as a general rule, Unions will do all they can NOT to support members with legal fees for tribunals and when they do they will pay for example £150 per day for representation at tribunal which is peanuts - a barrister charges much more than that.

The anti-bullying website Andrea Adams Trust told me that they CONSTANTLY hear from Union members who have been stitched up by their Union either in the workplace or once they've been sacked. They warned me that the Union assesses your prospects of success at ET (sensibly) but even if you are assessed as having over the percentage of success (varies Union to Union - could be 50%, could be 70%), you can be dropped like a hot brick (could be just as your tribunal is about to start) if that prospect of success drops below the threshold.

My personal experience at work - the Convenors were in cahoots with management and I have spoken to many people who have had similar experiences - within all different Unions. Many Shop Stewards actively work against their members, especially where there is a lot of bullying in the workplace. And when you try to raise the issues / make a complaint to a full-time official, they don't want to know.

'Unions are really great' is misleading - this is far too common a problem to continue to deny. Your experience is the exception, not the rule.

Why don't you try to find out how much your Union has had to pay out to individual members for breaching their contract with the member? The response might be quite interesting altho not a straight forward one as you would hope for.

A colleague's barrister told me that he frequently represents ex-Union members who are suing their Union because they have been badly let down. (This had happened to my colleage as well.) He said he has dealt with many Unions in this context - it is endemic.

It seems that Unions are prepared to pay out to fight their members in Court when they've fucked them over but not pay for legal fees when they've been sacked.

Getting stitched up by a Union is heart-breaking - especially (as I do) you really believe in the principles of the TU movement, but there's major issues there and I think people should be aware that they need to keep their wits about them and do their own research into their rights at work so they can assess the validity of the advice they receive from a Union rep. I've seen the wool pulled over people's eyes many times.

you seem to be in denial because you neber seem to acknowledge that there's major problems in Unions - you're about the only person that I've ever heard this from !

 

[Guineveretoo]

So, are you saying that Mortlake was NOT just spamming this site with links to their anti-union website?

Or are you just completely ignoring what I said in my post, and having a general go at me and at unions?

 

[Mortlake]

I was going to ignore the usual usenet troll-ding-dong, but will give it one more shot because this is important to people who need help at work.

The union part of the site quotes the legal director of the T&G saying that he spends less than 10% of his budget on employment law and implies that he uses no win no fee solicitors. This isn't a problem of a few bad apples or the usual imperfections of any organisation: it's very serious to members. Why else would the T&G have a dysfunctional electoral system and no clear contract with members?

No offence intended to those who help colleagues informally, or as reps, or on the interenet, but this is a £10-£15 a month membership organisation that should back-up reps with enough good officials and lawyers to match the employer's side.

I pick on the T&G because it's the union I know best but I saw a quote on a workplace bullying site saying that the AUT (a college lecturers union) has never once taken a case to a full employment tribunal for a member. And the Stable Lads Association is just as much of a cartoon organisation as it sounds: the details are on the certofffice.org web site as minutes of an internal hearing or a complaint.

What would be great would be if someone could find out which are the really good unions, so that people could join them. At the moment it's usually the employer that chooses.
John

PS re: spam
web site mentioned in two threads.
first thread started by someone called treehugger and someone called cesare. About this thread: sorry if I went over the top quoting myself in a sig but the two top links to Which Legal Service and [URL="http://www.co-operative.co.uk/joinnow"]Co-Operative[/URL] members' Legal service are the main ones. And the website quoted is an ameteur thing unlikely to make any money for me; it's nothing to do with my day job and looses me money by distracting me from it. Most of it is about how to cope when a union lets you down, not about being pro-this or anti-that.

 

[Guineveretoo]

I am just not clear as to your motives for linking to what I regard as an anti union website, since it appears to assume that all unions are bad and to recommend that people do not join.

Just because a trade union doesn't take a case to a "full employment tribunal" doesn't mean they haven't done a fantastic job defending and protecting their members. Often the member doesn't want to go to employment tribunal, in fact.

Also, just because a union uses lawyers on a fee base, doesn't mean they are not providing a brilliant service to their members.

I don't know what your specific gripe is with your union (which no longer exists, by the way - it's part of that "superunion" called Unite ), and I know that lots of people do have bad experiences of trade unions for one reason or another. And that is all unions. I reckon every union in the country has "failed" or made mistakes at one time or another, and has disgruntled members. I also reckon that every union in the country has done really good work for the majority of its members. Of course, those are the cases which are not publicised, because they are not newsworthy, or because the member wishes to move on and not be labelled as a troublemaker, or because the case is confidential.

Further, it's not the employer who chooses the union as such, but the rules of that union. Firstly, it would mostly make sense to join the union which is recognised by the employer for whom you work, because they will be consulted and informed about what is going on, and have legal rights to negotiate terms and conditions as well as providing the individual service. Unions have rules which say who can join and, although ones like UNITE are huge and their rules probably allow for people from most industries to join, the AUT, for example (your example...) is only allowed to take people into membership if they are teaching in a university or higher education setting.

 

[Zeppo]

Asea brill news and well done.

I have done the whole representative thing ending in a tribunal. We won an out of the tribunal settlement of £250. The other side had all the legal bollocks and big team must have cost them thousands.

The person I was representing was just too stressed out to take matters further - the whole case took 18 months of hard work.

Once again good news on your case.

 

[cesare]

web site mentioned in two threads.
first thread started by someone called treehugger and someone called cesare.

No - I didn't start that thread, so don't start misrepresenting my contribution. I commented throughout that thread as is usual in discussion threads on a bulletin board.

About this thread: sorry if I went over the top quoting myself in a sig but the two top links to Which Legal Service and [URL="http://www.co-operative.co.uk/joinnow"]Co-Operative[/URL] members' Legal service are the main ones. And the website quoted is an ameteur thing unlikely to make any money for me; it's nothing to do with my day job and looses me money by distracting me from it. Most of it is about how to cope when a union lets you down, not about being pro-this or anti-that.

Yes, you did go over the top. You still are. Take a look around this site (and particularly this forum) and see how many links there are touting insurance companies ... in fact, find one commercial link that hasn't been requested by a poster - go on.

 

[Mortlake]

I'm not an insurance company: I'm a bloke with a web site that apparently it is OK for you to refer to (well you didn't read much but you linked to it and made up the idea that it's a private company and deceitfull) but not for me. I'm not paid. If I'm commercial and a multi-million pound turnover union with loads of paid staff is not commercial, then so be it.

More importantly, if people don't have some way of getting good lawyers after getting the sack, that's a big problem as we've just seen. I know because it's happened to me, after years of membership of a union. I don't think this discussion is worth carrying-on unless you concede that some current unions can be very, very bad and difficult to fix. For example

• spending less than 10% of a legal budget on employment law,
• having no clear contracts with their members or
• running unworkable democratic systems.

And that's not an obscure cartoon union like the Stable Lads Association or even one of the ones that's often complained about. [I have no connection with Stable Lads, though - please don't think I'm spamming for them]

I don't know if it's pro union or anti union to say that some of the institutions themselves don't work and new ones or changes in the old ones would be nice.

PS Good news about Asea. Life goes on.

 

[Guineveretoo]

And will you concede that the majority of members who are supported by their union are more than happy with the service that they receive?

 

[cesare]

I quoted you Mortlake, that's an entirely different matter. You're linking to commercial sites as well as your own - and as I mentioned on the other thread, this is against the FAQs unless you've cleared it first. So, have you cleared it?

 

[Mortlake]

And will you concede that the majority of members who are supported by their union are more than happy with the service that they receive?

I'm interested, because if there is a good union with happy members then we're closer to agreeing (and they are happier, which is more important).

The only research I know from tribunal complainants suggests that nobody is happy: there is a kind of arms race between employers' legal insurers and complainants, and the complainents are out-gunned by posh barresters, big bundles, threats of costs against etc etc while the complainants' side are bluffing for a quick individialistic settlement.

The bit of research I quoted says that a lot of complainants aren't even in it for the money - they want injustice exposed - so no wonder they are not happy. I guess that union backed complainants are more dissapointed with about the same service that no-win no-fee complainants get.

I know that paid union officals and volunteer members do a lot of great work. I've been chuffed by a volunteer union rep acting witness and clear-headed advocate in a meeting I once had with an employer. If there was a cheap union that encouraged people like him then I think everyone would be happy with it.

But I also know that during loads of strife at my ex employer, the expensive union I belong to never provided a paid official to advise in a way that I knew about, and that the experience is echoed vehemently on workplace bullying web sites, and in my own experience.

So: I dunno.
Good question.
Some one else in the thread says I'm "linking to commercial web sites as well as my own" - I don't quite understand so am not replying.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Better answer:
Employment representation by unions is a scandle that should be exposed.
That's what I'm about; that's why I'm doing all this.
Volunteer self-help may be really good or not. Obviously it's not what the fifteen pounds a month is for; nor personal injury representation.

Most members are happy enough to subscribe in hope; they do not know if their union will help them come the worst, until it's too late and they discover the lack of contract, the less than 10% legal budget etc.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

If a tribunal asked for a medical report, would you expect it to come from the doctor or the patient? Stick to the facts of your case and apply those to the witness statements. If you believe the facts to be incorrectly presented or otherwise misleading, deal with these points individually. Its no good trying to undermine evidence by mere insinuation, which is essentially what your implying in pursuing this line imo.

I got as far as an initial hearing after not being shortlisted for interview despite meeting about 22 or 23 out of 25 criteria.

The solicitor for the other side was a bully who was aggressive and intimidating.

The solicitor said that they disputed whether I was, in fact, disabled (even though it was physically evident at the time) and also because I'd stated that I was in receipt of disability benefits, and you have to be disabled to be in receipt of disability benefits.

They said they needed medical proof. I said that's okay, I can ask my consultant and my GP to write letters. The solicitor said no, they would need a medico-legal report from a medical expert (which costs around a thousand quid), which is beyond the reach of most if not all unemployed people on benefits.

Apparently, that's quite a common tactic to get people to drop a case, to demand an expensive report that they know you have no hope of being able to afford to provide. In my case, it worked. But I think I scored a moral victory by getting them to the table and to the first hearing in the first place. Even though I didn't win and didn't get a settlement, I made a point of letting them know their behaviour was shoddy, and I knew that they knew they were shoddy.