EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL

Employment tribunals stand to hear different types of conflicts between employers and employees in Scotland, Wales and England. These non-departmental community bodies were formed as Industrial tribunals by the Industrial Training Act in 1964. The most common conflicts are related to employment inequity, unfair dismissal and redundancy payments. The administrative justice and tribunals council control and observe the Tribunals where as the tribunals service administers it. This tribunal is part of the United Kingdom tribunal system. (Holland, Burnett, 2007). The traditional court system was too expensive for the employers and claimants. It took time and was complex to give people an effective means of ensuring employment rights. The enactment of a series of employment right laws in the United kingdom as well as the building up of an Employment Tribunal took place at the same time. The main aim of the Tribunals is to give a quick, inexpensive and informal way of ensuring those rights of the employees. The Tribunals are made not to be formal and to inspire parties to serve as a means of expressing themselves. The Tribunals have not complicated civil procedure rules and special court dress. But at a County Court we can see the special court dress and complicated civil procedure rules. (Nairns, 2004). The legal bodies which include a Chairman or President who is a lawyer, a person suggested by an employer association, and one more individual who is suggested by the Trade Union Congress or affiliated union , is the Industrial Tribunals. The role of these people, who are called as independent groups are to hear and to make legally joining rulings which relate to employment law conflicts. From August 1998, the name of the independent groups was altered to Employment Tribunals under the Act of Employment Rights 1998 (Dispute Resolution). The function of the Employment Tribunals and the Industrial Tribunals are the same. There has been increasing use of provision under ETA 1996, S.4 (2) as amended by ERDA 1998.S.3 where by chairmen sit alone in other matter and that is now normal practice in relation to protection of wages and breach of contract questions. If the parties are consenting in other matters including unfair dismissal, it is possible for the chairmen to sit alone. If the third member has become indisposed or if forced to withdraw for some reason, chairmen sit with one other member (Nairns, 2004). The intension of the employment tribunals was to avail a means of resolving employment conflicts that was informal, speedy and cheap. They provide all these to the employees to an extent. The lawyers compare them with the courts than to the common people and those people find them scary and the informality is the most apparent to these lawyers. The issues in the case were really identified in a hearing rather than in the beginning days of the tribunal operation. But situations have changed now, as every case is well prepared and the issues are fully identified clearly before the hearing itself. The individual chairman has different preferences and it has been difficult for the practitioners know how cases will be handled in an unknown place. There was a wide range of jurisdictions for the employment tribunals. The greatest part of their workload was concentrated on many issues like unfair dismissals, redundancy pay, discrimination, breach of contract, working hour regulations, trade union issues, employment rights etc. They keep a lawyer to reduce the expenses and to avoid informality in employment tribunals and keep themselves out of the danger (Lewis, Sargeant, 2007). To weed out the increase in weak cases and backlogs the government of the United Kingdom had a definite practical reform. The first step was to introduce the pre-hearing review. A claim may be found out at a pre- hearing review and a judgement may be issued either to dismiss a case or to permit it to proceed to a hearing. Once a judgement is issued in respect of a particular matter, that matter is found out and, subject to an appeal or a review, it cannot be re-opened. Deposit orders where required by the party to pay a sum, if the party is allowed to continue to follow the whole, or a part of the respective claim or response to reduce the number of weak cases. If any point asserted as part of an argument proposed by a party have a few possibilities of future success, the judge can require a deposit. They can order deposits with a limit of 500 and the money is to be paid in the pre-hearing reviews only. Judges will be able to direct the claimants to pay a deposit of 1,000 at any stage if the claims are put before to the employment tribunals on or after 6th of April 2012. This rule has merit and demerit. Those who want to institute legal proceedings against the employees will think if to waste their money or not. The number of fake cases will decline. The main demerit is that the genuine claimants will have a fear in their mind whether to go forward with the case or not. If they lose the case, they will lose their money too (Adams, 1996) (personneltoday.com). The awarding up of costs against the losing side was the step taken by the government of the United Kingdom to decrease the number of weak cases. The Tribunals have the power to grant a maximum sum of £10,000 under this order. It is generally acknowledged that costs awards are not made often enough and would avoid serial litigants, so any reforms would be welcome. To make people think curiously before initiating tribunal proceedings and to encourage parties pursuing weak claims, the Government increased the cost cap. The difficulty of recovering costs means that simply raising the entry may not be enough to discourage weak claims and response. As a way of giving undue pressure on the opposition party to move away from the tribunal process, respondents or those who represent them utilize the threat of cost sanctions where the claimant is not represented. This is the suggestion of an untrustworthy evidence. This problem may get worse if there is an increase in the possible costs award. This may obstruct a genuine case brought into the tribunal (Nairns, 2011). A major piece of the legislation is is The Act of Employment in 2002. This activity brings a lot of changes to the procedure of employment tribunals. The key themes of this Act were the change for the better of the procedures of employment tribunal and the mechanisms for finding a solution to the workplace conflict to the increasing number and cost of employment tribunal tribunal claims in immediate past years. Uniform dealing of fixed-term employees and a time period for the trade union learning representatives when they are not required to work are included in it other than provisions on a range of other issues. This Act gives the basis for the modification of better rules of the employment tribunal to render capable a very difficult approach to handle weak cases. It enables the desk of State to make regulations authorizing the tribunals to award the money against the representative of a party for behaving badly or making the procedures disorder without any reason and issue commands on one party to make payments to the other for the time spent on preparing a case (personnletoday.com).

The A.C.A.S (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service), introduced on May 21st 2001, was made to operate in England and Wales at the beginning and was extended on April 6th 2004 to cover Scotland by means of a new Great Britian scheme. The A.C.A.S arbitration scheme was brought in to give a voluntary substitute to the employment tribunal for the resolution of unjust or unfair dismissal conflicts. The resolution of conflicts under this scheme is confidential, fast and cost efficient. ACAS is an independent and impartial scheme that does not support a particular party. A. C. A. S is on the top of the non-departmental organization of the United Kingdom's Government. They lend a hand to find a proper resolution of a conflict. When compared to the employment tribunal, the process under this scheme is non-legalistic, more informal and flexible. They believe that through the support and facilitation of tough industrial affair practice, they can improve the organizations and working life. Arbitration or mediation is used as a medium for that purpose. The best known role of the service is its collective conciliation role that is finding the solution for the conflicts among the groups of employees or workers, frequently represented by a trade union and their employees in it. (Philip, Scott, 2005) (personneltoday.com). The unfair dismissal claims cannot be heard by an employment tribunal any more, if both the parties to the conflict have completed on arbitration agreement to have the conflict being solved under the scheme once. This scheme is made available as a substitute to go to an employment tribunal hearing for the cases of assumed unfair dismissals. For example, if an employee lost his job because of his conduct or capability, points of the EC law are raised as it is not involved under the jurisdiction and complex legal issues (Philip, Scott, 2005). The Department of Trade and Industry set up the draft employment tribunals Regulations 2004. It was introduced in the Parliament under the Act of the Employment Tribunal 1996 and came into effect on October 1st 2004. The implementation of the Act of the tribunal reform provisions is introduced by the Act of Employment Tribunal 2002 and some suggestions of the Employment task force to make better the structure of the legislation and cast again it was the associated Rules of the Procedure left in the schedules of these Regulations and the main purpose of that change has been already made in these regulations (bis. gov. uk). The Regulation 6 is in charge with the appointing of the Regional Chairmen of Tribunal in England and Wales. It says that these appointments should be made by The Lord Chancellor from the board of the permanent Chairmen should make these appointments. The regional chairmen are responsible for the tribunals and chairmen in their appointed area. They are also answerable to the President. The President or the appointed Regional Chairmen can propose a permanent chairmen to release the role of the Regional chairman, if these circumstances exist (bis.gov.uk). The Government of the United Kingdom introduced different rules and regulations to reduce the difficulties in the Employment Tribunal. They brought different measures to make it simple, quick and cost effective. But, because of the involvement of lawyers, bonds and awards, made the tribunal more expensive and formal like a normal court. The measures which the Government of United Kingdom took does not work up to their expectation because of these reasons which ended up blocking many genuine and lawful cases to come up.