News roundup: Employment tribunals

13 January 2012

In this week’s news two tribunal cases caught the eye: one for its payout of almost £1m and the other believed to be the first of its kind. 

Earlier in the week, a former NHS worker was awarded £933,115 in compensation after an employment tribunal found that he had been subject to racial discrimination and unfair dismissal. The tribunal found that the claimant had suffered "systematic discrimination" and "an intimidating environment". And, after they had had raised a grievance, the trust in question had failed to take it seriously or investigate it sufficiently reported Personnel Today.

Elsewhere, a tribunal heard this week how a human resources executive was “forced out of his job” over his LinkedIn CV, after angering his employer by putting his CV online and advertising that he was interested in other “career opportunities”.

The case is thought to be the first for constructive dismissal after a dispute with bosses over a profile on the professional networking site LinkedIn. The case has raised broad issues for how employees use websites such as LinkedIn and debate about the rights and wrongs of all involved.

But despite the headline-grabbing tribunals mentioned above, it was reported on the People Management website today that new Ministry of Justice figures show the number of employment tribunal claims to have dropped significantly between July and September 2011, compared to the same time a year ago.

Between July and September there were 40,300 cases, a reduction of 30 per cent on the previous year. Most of this decrease was accounted for by cases with multiple claimants, which went down by 41 per cent. However, the number of single claims also decreased slightly, by 1 per cent.

“The reduced number of claims is mostly accounted for by the fact that a large volume of holiday pay claims was brought by employees in the airline industry in 2010, which led to a spike in the statistics for that year,” explained Audrey Williams, partner at law firm Eversheds.

Find out how Ochre can support your business with employment law advice.