Tribunal system is unfair to companies

A thorough review of the tribunal system to remove its clear bias towards employees is long overdue. Employers are constantly being blackmailed by employees who bring meritless tribunal cases against them.

Recently, a temporary worker brought a tribunal claim for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination against both our recruitment business and our client.

Although the tribunal dismissed the case as without merit, it would not award our costs, even though the worker later failed to produce evidence for an additional claim under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. She subsequently dropped this claim, having made it known that she would never have carried on with the claim if we had paid up at the outset.

So although we had acted blamelessly, we spent £2,500 defending ourselves.

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Opportunistic ex-employees know that the system is biased in their favour, so we are faced with a dilemma in future. Do we give way and pay off such individuals, or stick to our principles and defend our business against legitimised blackmail?

Janet Crawford
Executive chairwoman, Angel Human Resources