Unfair dismissal awards
May 11th, 2000
A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 11th May 2000.
Since successive governments removed the £11,000 limits for unfair dismissal awards, employers have looked with real alarm at the mounting scale of these awards.
Your report (May 9th) on the settlement of £200,000 to a £35,000 per annum community relations officer is but the latest in a series in which the proceedings of industrial tribunals have lost all sense of proportion.
This particular settlement is about eight times the individual’s after tax annual salary or about five times the maximum which anyone would expect from a private employer for forced redundancy after say 25 years’ service. It is little wonder that the recipient said she was “pleased” with the outcome. At this rate employees will be positively queuing up to be “unfairly dismissed” while employers will avoid wherever possible taking on anyone whom they feel may be able to claim “unfair dismissal” on grounds of being female or from a minority group or both.
Thus a law designed to protect people will, by the way it is being operated, work against them.