The recent Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decision in Ingram v Bristol Street Parts EAT/0601/06 [subscription required] is a good example of the sort of difficulties that should lead to the statutory dispute resolution procedures being consigned to the scrapheap.
In this case, an employer found itself on the wrong end of an employment tribunal decision that a dismissal was automatically unfair (albeit with compensation reduced to zero for contributory fault). The decision was made on the basis that the employer had presented the employee with evidence during a disciplinary meeting, and so it had failed to inform the employee by the time of the meeting of the 'basis' upon which the disciplinary action was being taken (under step two of the statutory dismissal procedure).
The EAT overturned this, saying that employers do not have to present all the evidence beforehand and it is enough to provide information in advance that will enable employees to put their side of the story.
Two things are striking about this case.
The first is that the case proceeded to a tribunal only because the employee's representatives felt that she could succeed in claiming automatic unfair dismissal for a failure to follow the statutory procedures. They felt that a general complaint of unfair dismissal was bound to fail, as the dismissal was for a fair reason (gross misconduct) and the employee would have been dismissed even if the procedure had been flawless. In other words, the claim went to a tribunal only because of the existence of the statutory procedures (the whole point of their introduction was to reduce tribunal claims).
The second is that the employment tribunal had such difficulty in interpreting something as fundamental as what information employers should provide to employees before a disciplinary hearing. After all, if an employment tribunal got itself into such a muddle, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Read the full transcript (Microsoft Word format, 79K) of the case on the EAT website.
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