Once again, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has managed to issue a judgment that many people think fails to reflect the reality of managing workers in the real world. The judgment deals with who an employer must permit a worker to bring as a companion to a formal disciplinary or grievance hearing. The Employment Rights Act 1999 provides that a worker may ask to bring: a colleague a trade union representative, or a trade union official to such a hearing; and sets out what that companion can...
Employers don’t like harassment claims. The first reason is that employers expect that a tribunal will usually prefer the perception and injured feelings of a claimant over an objective analysis by an employer. So employers feel that the chips are stacked against them. However a recent case has shown again that this expectation isn’t necessarily so, and that the context of any alleged harassment matters. This will be welcome news for employers and should be a warning to speculative claimants. The second...