Emplyment tribunal

[Druid123]

I have just been on an employment tribunal. With a young man as his representative. He put his own case forward very well as he could not afford legal assistance. He tied the managers and HR department up in knots. They admitted what they had done was wrong and that they had made mistakes. But the company solicitor found a legal loop hole and the poor fella lost. I just feel so gutted that a young family has suffered because money talks when it comes to the British legal system. All the years that I believed in the rule of law in my country have been dashed.

My DH represented himself against the Ministry of Defence in a week long employment tribunal and won. It was literally him and either me and his mum with a notepad vs them and all their lawyers and HR and important bods with their folders and shiny laptops.

He is not legally trained at all and I have never been prouder of him.

The man you speak about should be proud of himself for even attempting to go it alone

Employment Tribunals originated as fora for individual workers to have a platform to put across their objections and have injustices heard and resolved. That was before ET became heavily legalised and politicised.

It's good they went back to their roots on this case, even though the young man didn't win, he earned a moral victory for having showed up and put his case across for himself rather than having someone speak for him.

Employment (previously Industrial ) Tribunals have never been intended as forum for objections or injustices. They have always been about the law - they are, and always have been, courts of law. Courts of law care nothing for morals or opinions.

Lucy my main point was that the workers didn't have the resource to hire a team of legal beagles, they had union reps, but it was more common to self represent than nowadays so the guy in the OP having to self- represent was how it ought to be. People should be able to say their piece if they want to, and not be disadvantaged by having an opposing skilled barrister hired by a corporate with limitless resource tying them in knots.

In that case, they shouldn't be courts of law. They should be talking shops. Because where there are courts of law there will always be, and have always been, barristers and solicitors. I have been going to tribunals for 40 years, and I can't recall a time when lawyers weren't in the mix. And on both sides. Tribunals allow people to say their piece. However, if their piece isn't the law, then they'll not win. And they must expect to have their piece challenged.

I'm certainly not on the side of employers, but employment is just like anything else - if you go to law, then you must expect the law to operate without recourse to sympathy. I have seen litigants in person succeed in their cases against huge law firms. Lawyers have no monopoly of the law. But if you go to law, you must understand the law, or get someone who does.

I sympathise with the young man OP but I can guarantee that unless it was something incredibly novel and unusual, even if the company hadn’t had a solicitor the employment judge would have checked that the claim was in order eg that he had made the claim in the appropriate time limit, that he had enough qualifying service to claim unfair dismissal etc.