I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it:
Employment tribunal fees unlawful, Supreme Court rules - bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40727400
Either that or … buzzing !! 
And bad employees will be delighted.
I’ve only once been taken to an employment tribunal ( driver sacked after another driver made a complaint of bullying ). It was interesting whilst waiting to go into the tribunal to listen to a different set of lawyers that were running through their case which involved them representing London Underground. The guy making the complaint of racism, was known to the lawyers simply because he did it so regularly.
Bad employers, bad employees, be better without both.
Probably just means even more get pushed to self-employed through agency there is already a trend that firms simply don’t want the aggravation of people on the books. Think it’s too much of a case of closing the stable door to try and turn back the clock now.
It’s been the case for a long time that every time there seems to be an employment rights win it really turns out to be a win for the casual and immigrant labour market.
Crying bee…
.
Although on the face of it this is a good thing, the reality is that even if you won the penalty for the employer and compensation awarded to the plaintiff are far from satisfactory.
If you’re older what good is the minimal award offered when you could or might never work again. I’ve found them to be nothing more than a talking shop which usually favours employers and doesn’t reflect the real issues of why the case was brought in the first place!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
mirror.co.uk/news/politics/s … l-10872958
There will be quite a few on here who have been cheated out of their rights because they didn’t have the money to persue a claim for unfair dismissal etc. All down to that idiot Grayling apparently.
Just waiting for the howls of protest from the CBI.
cav551:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/supreme-court-rules-tory-tribunal-10872958There will be quite a few on here who have been cheated out of their rights because they didn’t have the money to persue a claim for unfair dismissal etc. All down to that idiot Grayling apparently.
Just waiting for the howls of protest from the CBI.
Quite correct. 
its not just tribunals, the legal aid changes did exactly the same but worse, the man in the street cannot have legal aid but high end criminals, people wishing to stay here unlawfully and the likes, can have tens of thousands, some parties in a case can be mr average, nothing, cheating person who keeps bar, any amount, (did you see what I did there no indications of race creed or greed) but my thoughts go with you.
oh those bloody lazy unions only in it for them selves never do anything for the average worker just take your subs and run …oh wait a minuite
Own Account Driver:
Probably just means even more get pushed to self-employed through agency there is already a trend that firms simply don’t want the aggravation of people on the books.
Drivers are not by and large “self-employed” - that is just a pretence for the purpose of evading tax and other responsibilities. Agency drivers are just workers on casual terms.
A new generation of judges in the Supreme Court seem to have put an end to the contractual nonsense in which employers could apparently just declare in writing that they weren’t employers, and workers’ rights then went out the window - as if it Is coherent that liability for payroll taxes or compliance with statutory minimums is entirely a choice for the employer! Today’s agency driver bears no similarity to the situation of the owner-drivers in the Ready Mixed Concrete case of the 1960s.
These relatively recent cases, HMRC’s crackdown on tax evaders, and finally now the abolition of ET claim fees, should now see sense return to the legal position between employer and worker and an end to fiddles.
There really ought to be a regulator who is in a position to actively inspect and verify how businesses conduct themselves in relation to employment law, similar to how the DVSA operate in relation to compliance with drivers’ hours and so on, and issue penalties or pull down the shutters on those who cannot demonstrate compliance.
Think it’s too much of a case of closing the stable door to try and turn back the clock now.
Holy mixed metaphor!
It’s been the case for a long time that every time there seems to be an employment rights win it really turns out to be a win for the casual and immigrant labour market.
Perhaps those cases weren’t really wins for employment rights, then!
Think it’s too much of a case of closing the stable door to try and turn back the clock now.
while putting the rabbit back in the hat, keeping your shoulder to the wheel and nose to the grindstone.
Rjan:
Own Account Driver:
Probably just means even more get pushed to self-employed through agency there is already a trend that firms simply don’t want the aggravation of people on the books.Drivers are not by and large “self-employed” - that is just a pretence for the purpose of evading tax and other responsibilities. Agency drivers are just workers on casual terms.
A new generation of judges in the Supreme Court seem to have put an end to the contractual nonsense in which employers could apparently just declare in writing that they weren’t employers, and workers’ rights then went out the window - as if it Is coherent that liability for payroll taxes or compliance with statutory minimums is entirely a choice for the employer! Today’s agency driver bears no similarity to the situation of the owner-drivers in the Ready Mixed Concrete case of the 1960s.
These relatively recent cases, HMRC’s crackdown on tax evaders, and finally now the abolition of ET claim fees, should now see sense return to the legal position between employer and worker and an end to fiddles.
There really ought to be a regulator who is in a position to actively inspect and verify how businesses conduct themselves in relation to employment law, similar to how the DVSA operate in relation to compliance with drivers’ hours and so on, and issue penalties or pull down the shutters on those who cannot demonstrate compliance.
Think it’s too much of a case of closing the stable door to try and turn back the clock now.
Holy mixed metaphor!
It’s been the case for a long time that every time there seems to be an employment rights win it really turns out to be a win for the casual and immigrant labour market.
Perhaps those cases weren’t really wins for employment rights, then!
Self-employed, gig economy, call it what you want, it shows no sign of going away. The government only pays lip service to doing anything about it. If they were that bothered they’d shut down Uber and force Amazon to take on their delivery drivers but they don’t. Unless there’s something that means employers can only have British citizens on a proper contract nothing will change. You can have the unions get all sorts of employment rights improvements, in court but, if firms are just going to employ immigrants from agencies, what’s the point?
Big companies get away with cheap immigrant labour whilst anyone who questions it gets called a racist, mostly by other better paid British people. Have to be honest, it’s a clever trick although, divide and rule’s always worked.
Own Account Driver:
Rjan:
[…]Perhaps those cases weren’t really wins for employment rights, then!
Self-employed, gig economy, call it what you want, it shows no sign of going away. The government only pays lip service to doing anything about it. If they were that bothered they’d shut down Uber and force Amazon to take on their delivery drivers but they don’t. Unless there’s something that means employers can only have British citizens on a proper contract nothing will change. You can have the unions get all sorts of employment rights improvements, in court but, if firms are just going to employ immigrants from agencies, what’s the point?
There’s certainly no let-up in the increasing casualisation of work, but when you observe how many people are jumping into bed with the right-wing Brexiteers (whose agenda is to further assault pay, conditions, and democratic choice through “free trade deals”), it’s obvious workers have still not learned their lessons about what free markets and free trade actually means!
Big companies get away with cheap immigrant labour whilst anyone who questions it gets called a racist, mostly by other better paid British people. Have to be honest, it’s a clever trick although, divide and rule’s always worked.
Tbh, I don’t think anyone has ever called anyone racist simply for questioning bosses right to undercut going rates or pay less than a decent wage.
If workers got their own arguments in order, and understood that they are rejecting free market principles, or rejecting blackleg workers working outside the terms of a workplace union, rather than rejecting “foreigners”, they’d be in much better stead, because it is hardly racist for insisting that foreign workers join the workplace union equally with domestic workers, and it is hardly racist for insisting that they be paid the same. The strength of the bosses’ appetite for hiring them would then evaporate.
I’ve said it before, without bosses being permitted to undercut going rates, there simply wouldn’t be the same draw for economic migrants. It’s when bosses are permitted to assault the going rate for work (or the acceptable conditions of work), which creates innumerable new lower-paid, inferior positions designed to draw immigrants in, that you get migration at a high rate - because the agenda is specifically to replace the workers already available locally to do that work.
What people who are basically racist hold is that the market should stay, and neither bosses nor principles of free markets should be directly challenged, but that it is acceptable to attack immigrants personally, as a roundabout way of trying to regulate the market in domestic workers’ favour. More far-sighted thinkers recognise that the laziness of thought and deference to the boss class which is inherent in this approach never goes away, and what ultimately happens is that bosses (not being directly threatened by these workers) adopt and encourage the language of nationalism and conflict between groups of the working class (all the while bosses continue to hire and rely on cheap immigrant labour), and eventually workers get caught up fighting other workers who are supposedly there to steal jobs, without anything ever being done about the root problem which is bosses themselves paying workers too little and hiring on inferior terms.
It hardly needs to be pointed out how the Tory party each time promises to reduce immigration, but then actually does nothing at all about it. It’s not because they are confounded by EU rules, because they have full control over non-EU immigration, and if they wanted to impose a quota on that they could do so tomorrow. But it suits their agenda to deceive in this way - to pretend they want to increase wages, to pretend they are blocked by the EU from doing anything about immigration or its effects, because in the course of pretending and right-wing-inclined workers awaiting the results, the economy continues to operate on cheap labour and they maybe even get the prize of leaving the EU which will allow them to start undercutting even further (by abolishing even more workers’ rights).
And when the improvements fail to materialise for the right-wing-inclined workers, they don’t in practice reassess their trust in the representatives of the British ruling class in the Tory party, they just double down on blaming immigrants and dark forces or foreign nations, and the cycle repeats as the working class sink into misery. That’s why such thinking amongst workers is cancerous and never indulged by those who see it for what it is - because it is racist and it’s not a solution.