Employment Judges

It doesnt seem like 5 minutes since Tribunal Chairmen were promoted to Employment Judges (with a resultant payrise I might add) and its certainly seems that the Ministry of Justice is keen to get its pound of flesh as a result.

The (draft) Employment Tribunals Act 1996 (Tribunal Composition) Order 2009, which is due to come into force on 6th April 2009, has been placed on the OPSI website; it extends the types of hearings when an Employment Judge can actually sit alone, to include holiday pay claims under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (and some other very obscure statutory instruments). This supplements the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) (Amendment) Regulations 2008 which, amongst other things, authorised Employment Judges sitting alone to hear Stage 1 equal value claims.

I suppose that this doesnt really raise much interest other than with Employment Lawyers out there who are following this blog but its interesting to note that increasing the powers for Employment Judges sitting alone potentially erodes the industrial jury and creates opportunity for injustice.

Il sit this out and reserve judgement (as such) but in the meantime I wish to thank Daniel Barnett for bringing this to my attention through his updates.