Want to challenge your unfair dismissal? That’ll be £1,200
Charging employees to bring employment tribunals—even if they win—erodes their legal protection
EIGHT years after Britain emerged from recession, average real earnings are still below their peak. But measly pay is not the only thing squeezing workers. Since 2013 employees who think they have been wronged by their employer—underpaid or dismissed unfairly, for instance—have had to pay up to £1,200 ($1,500) to go to an employment tribunal, which was previously free. A challenge to the legality of such fees came before the Supreme Court on March 27th. A judgment is expected by the summer.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Justice in an age of austerity”
Britain April 1st 2017
- The two-year countdown to Brexit has begun
- As it celebrates Brexit, UKIP loses its man in the Commons
- Want to challenge your unfair dismissal? That’ll be £1,200
- British Airways is turning into a no-frills airline
- An attack in London puts Birmingham’s Muslims in the spotlight
- Converts to Islam are likelier to radicalise than native Muslims
- How Brexit damaged Britain’s democracy
From the April 1st 2017 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
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The slow death of a Labour buzzword
And what that says about Britain’s place in the world
Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is
At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be
Can potholes fuel populism?
A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK
Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks?
How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party