RESEARCH REPORT: DETERMINATIONS OF THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS AUTHORITY Volume 27  Number 3 October 2002   Introduction   The Authority and Tribunal caseloads   The personal grievance profile   Grievance outcomes   Determinations and remdies: looking for explanations   Factors associated with grievance outcomes   Grievance remedies   Reduction of remedies   Costs   Summary conclusions

The personal grievance profile

The geographical spread was similar to that for the broader caseloads of the institutions. There is a continuing, gradual northward shift of the grievance caseload. For the Authority, 58 percent of grievance determinations were issued from the Auckland registry, whereas Auckland and Hamilton accounted for 54 percent of the Tribunal grievance output during the sample period. The Wellington Authority issued 24 percent of the grievance determinations (25 percent in the Tribunal), and the Christchurch Authority issued 18 percent (down from 21 percent for the Christchurch and Dunedin Tribunals).

* This category includes cases where the primary issue involved proper submission of the grievance, the existence of an employment contract, or whether (other than in constructive dismissal cases) a dismissal occurred, as well as including grievances protesting dismissals for reasons other than misconduct, performance or redundancy.

As might have been expected, though, some of the logistics have changed. In the Tribunal, 68 percent of grievance hearings took no more than one day, and 86 percent were over in two. In the Authority, 95 percent of grievance investigation meetings are over in two days, and 77 percent in one day.

Eighty six percent of Authority grievance determinations fit into 10 pages or less, whereas by contrast, only 45 percent of Tribunal grievance decisions were 10 pages or less.

As for the parties to grievance proceedings, 54 percent of grievance applicants to the Authority were male, down slightly from 61 percent of Tribunal grievants. Table Four sets out the major categories of party representation. The figures show a small but perceptible, and perhaps predictable, movement towards self-representation, mainly
amongst applicants, seemingly at the expense of lay advocates. Certainly there is no lessening of the use of lawyers in the Authority, proportionally speaking, relative to their involvement in the Tribunal adjudication process under the ECA.

Table Five illustrates that there has been a change in the overall profile of grievants bringing cases for determination by the Authority, by comparison with grievants going through to adjudication in the Tribunal.

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* The applicant category "Unions, employee organizations or mixed occupations" (less than 1% of Tribunal grievance applications and 2% of Authority grievance applications) has been excluded from this table, and the percentages calculated as proportions of the sum of all other personal grievance applications decided.
Table Five presents aggregate and summary categories for indicative purposes by collapsing the many more specific occupations in the standard classification of occupations used by Statistics New Zealand.

There were some corresponding changes in the industry makeup of respondent employers. Most noticeably, only 22 percent of grievance respondents in the Authority were in the wholesale and retail trade and restaurants and hotels sector, compared with 38 percent of respondents from this sector in the earlier Tribunal period. The most significant increases in respondents were in the community, social and personal services sector, the finance, insurance, real estate and business services sector, and the utilities sector.

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	Introduction
	The Authority and Tribunal caseloads
	The personal grievance profile
	Grievance outcomes
	Determinations and remdies: looking for explanations
	Factors associated with grievance outcomes
	Grievance remedies
	Reduction of remedies
	Costs
	Summary conclusions