RESEARCH REPORT:  ADJUDICATION IN THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL Volume 24   Number 3 October  1999   Introduction   The database of decisions The Tribunal's adjudication workload   Grievance outcomes   Factors associated with Tribunal adjudication outcomes   Does representation make a difference?   Does representation really make a difference?   A concluding comment

The popular perception is that most of the Tribunal's workload involves unjustified dismissal claims, and the Department of Labour's own statistics on case applications and disposals bear that out. It is also the common experience of industrial tribunals and courts the world over. That said, the wall-to-wall picture of adjudication issues set out in Table One is somewhat more complex, reflecting both the full range of substantive issues over which the Tribunal has jurisdiction and the procedural maneuvering that is involved in many cases heading for adjudication. Even so, it is apparent that substantive personal grievance decisions still dominate, and that pattern would be accentuated even further if the 1,000 or so decisions dealing solely with after-the-event claims for costs were taken out of the equation.

The sample for Table One consists of all adjudication decisions issued by the Employment Tribunal for the years 1992 through 1997 inclusive. The categorisation is by the primary subject of the application only. The data for 1991 decisions are more complex in the sense that those early cases are intermingled with cases inherited under the Labour Relations Act 1987, and they have not yet been incorporated in the database. Not all of the data from 1998 and 1999 decisions have yet been entered into the database either, and so those decisions have not been included for purposes of this paper.

What is apparent from Table One is that the main body of the Tribunal's adjudication workload consists of personal grievances, arrears of wages and holiday pay, and costs and procedural matters associated with those claims, and particularly with personal grievance claims. Substantive personal grievance decisions account for something over 40 percent of decisions issued. Most of these are dismissal cases, although there is some understatement of disadvantage claims in Table One because the data for this paper are based only on the primary subject of each application dealt with in the decision.

A personal grievance claim for unjustified dismissal will sometimes incorporate also a grievance claim of disadvantage alleged to arise from an unjustified action of the employer, or a wage arrears claim or an application for a penalty. These secondary claims have been omitted from the data for this paper because, while they complicate the analysis somewhat, they don't materially change the conclusions to be drawn from the analysis. That simplification does, however, result in an understatement of the extent of some claims, including disadvantage grievance claims.

Fully one fifth of decisions issued deal with costs, and usually solely with costs. These would, of course, normally occupy less of the Tribunal Member's time than a substantive decision on a case. Procedural matters - applications for discovery, for adjournment, for joinder, for strike out, for submission out of time, for referral to the Court, and so forth - also account for something over 12 percent of adjudication decisions, even though experience would suggest that many more such procedural applications are dealt with informally by Tribunal Members through conferences with the parties. One suspects that a longitudinal analysis would show a rise over time in these types of applications, and perhaps in the numbers of them going to an adjudicated decision.

Turning back to dismissal cases, dismissals for reasons of misconduct, redundancy, or poor performance predominate, although the number of constructive dismissal claims - where the employer would usually deny the dismissal rather than advancing a reason for it - is perhaps surprisingly high.

The main bases for dismissal contributing to the 'Dismissal: Other' category are dismissals for incapacity by way of illness or injury, for absence without leave or by way of abandonment of employment, for breach of trust and confidence, and for incompatibility. This category also includes cases turning on whether an employment relationship existed, whether a dismissal occurred, or whether the employment has simply terminated by operation of the contract in one way or another.

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	Introduction
	The database of decisions
	The Tribunal's adjudication workload
	Grievance outcomes
	Factors associated with Tribunal adjudication outcomes
	Does representation make a difference?
	Does representation really make a difference?
	A concluding comment