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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This paper has presented an update on the Employment Tribunal’s adjudication case profile and the outcomes for parties in the Tribunal’s “bread and butter” personal grievance caseload.
Among the principal findings was a gradual decline in applicant success rates in the Tribunal’s adjudication jurisdiction. Focusing on personal grievances, it was seen that applicant success rates had dropped over the life of the Tribunal for the three major types of personal grievance dismissal cases: those alleging unjustifiable dismissal for reasons of misconduct, poor performance, and redundancy. In the case of dismissals for misconduct, grievant success rates were seen to have fallen by about 30 percentage points in a series of dramatic steps between 1992 and 1999, although there is a hint on incomplete figures that this may have turned around somewhat in the year 2000.
Regression analysis of case variables against outcomes in misconduct cases confirmed the changing fortunes of the parties over time, but offered few other clues as to why applicant success rates have been in such consistent decline. Of course, that does not mean that there are not explanations; only that the explanations are not available in the case decision data that we keep and that are the subject of this research note.
Over the period of existence of the Tribunal, there have been changes in influential Court personnel, and in Tribunal Membership, and some shifts in the political winds. Perhaps relatedly, there have been a number of particularly significant case decisions during the past decade that trained observers might see as turning points, and a matching of these seminal cases to the pattern of the data, while beyond the scope of this note, might be illuminating. In terms of explanations for the phenomenon of declining applicant success rates there remains also the unmeasured factor of the merits of applicants’ cases, and the possibility that the general level of relative merits of cases coming before the Tribunal in adjudication might have changed over time as, for example, employers become more knowledgeable about employees’ rights and due process.
One suspects that the explanations for declining applicant success rates, particularly dramatic declines of the magnitude observed in misconduct dismissal cases, are to be found in these sorts of factors. No obvious explanations are apparent in the raw case data.
Reference
Bartlett, Philip et. al. (eds) (2000), Brooker’s Employment Law Wellington: Brooker’s Limited.
McAndrew, Ian (1999), Adjudication in the Employment Tribunal: Some Facts and
Figures on Caseload and Representation. New Zealand Journal of Industrial
Relations, 24(3): 365-382.
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