RESEARCH REPORT: ADJUDICATION IN THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL
| Volume 25 Number 3 | October 2000 |
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RESEARCH REPORT: ADJUDICATION IN THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL
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The Tribunal's adjudication workload
Table One sets out the Tribunal's caseload profile. The sample for this table consists of all adjudication decisions issued by the Tribunal for the years 1992 through 1999 inclusive. The categorisation is by the primary subject of the application only.
As might be expected, substantive personal grievance claims make up the largest category of adjudication cases in the Tribunal, accounting in Table One for 42 percent of decisions issued. The popular perception is that an even higher percentage of the workload of the Tribunal is taken up with personal grievance claims and that is undoubtedly true. The grievance proportion of cases resolved in the Tribunal's mediation jurisdiction would certainly be higher.
In addition, many of the other decision categories in Table One include preliminary, interrogatory or supplementary matters related to a primary personal grievance claim. Most obviously, a proportionate number of costs decisions would derive from personal grievance claims, but so too would many of the decisions categorised in Table One under such headings as Jurisdiction, Remedies, Discovery, Rehearing, Removal, Stay, Strike Out, Compliance, Consent, Submission, and Practice and Procedure.
There are some changes evident from the corresponding table of 1992 - 1997 decisions published same time last year. On a base of six years of decisions (about 5,300), even a quite small change in the overall percentage breakdown of cases with the addition of the decisions for a further two years (1998 and 1999) may be indicative of a developing trend.
| Type of Adjudication Case | Frequency | Percent |
| Personal Grievance: Duress and Miscellaneous |
8
|
0.1
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| Personal Grievance: Sexual Harassment |
32
|
0.4
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| Personal Grievance: Unjustified Disadvantage |
134
|
1.9
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| PG: Dismissal: Constructive Dismissal |
502
|
7.0
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| PG: Dismissal: Misconduct |
855
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11.9
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| PG: Dismissal: Poor Performance |
459
|
6.4
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| PG: Dismissal: Redundancy |
587
|
8.2
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| PG: Dismissal: Other |
453
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6.3
|
| Apprenticeships |
5
|
0.1
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| Arrears (Wages) |
715
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10.0
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| Arrears (Holiday Pay) |
184
|
2.6
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| Costs |
1502
|
21.0
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| Dispute |
140
|
1.9
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| Jurisdiction |
133
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1.9
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| Parental Leave |
9
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0.1
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| Penalty |
25
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0.3
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| Remedies | 34 |
0.5 |
| Application for Discovery | 61 |
0.9 |
| Application for Rehearing | 55 |
0.8 |
| Application for Removal Order (to EC) | 174 |
2.4 |
| Application for Stay | 37 |
0.5 |
| Application to Strike Out Proceeding | 83 |
1.2 |
| Compliance Order | 253 |
3.5 |
| Consent Order | 276 |
3.8 |
| Submission of Grievance | 202 |
2.8 |
| Practice & Procedure (Other) | 253 |
3.5 |
| TOTAL | 7170 |
100.0 |
One thing that is apparent is a decline in adjudicated decisions on personal grievance claims alleging unjustified dismissal for alleged misconduct as a percentage of both dismissal claims and personal grievance claims more generally. For 1992 - 1997, Tribunal decisions on misconduct dismissals accounted for 31.4 percent of dismissal case decisions. With the inclusion of data for 1998 and 1999, dismissal cases accounted for only 29.9 percent of dismissal claims adjudicated.
There was only a much smaller decline in performance dismissal decisions as a percentage of the total with the addition of the 1998 and 1999 data, and a small proportional increase in redundancy dismissals. The "dismissal - other" category has seen an increase from 13.0 percent of dismissal decisions through 1997 to 15.9 percent of dismissal decisions through 1999. This category includes dismissals for incapacity by way of illness or injury, for absence without leave, for breach of trust and confidence, and for incompatibility, among other reasons, and the increase is diffused among them, though trust and confidence is prominent. The noteworthy change, though, was in misconduct dismissal decisions, and this paper takes up that theme a little later after the presentation of more general, summary profile data on the Tribunal's adjudication output.
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