Members could be forgiven for thinking that our work is just about disciplinary cases and grievances at work. It’s true that these two areas produce most of our work; but only just!
We recently won a claim in the County Court for a former Lloyds Bank member who had been transferred to a new employer under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006. He had received a redundancy payment from the new company that was several thousand pounds less than it should have been. The problem stemmed from historic contractual terms and conditions, which had been misinterpreted by the employer. But what was most noticeable about this case was that it took a 7 YEAR FIGHT to get an Order from the Court that the money should be paid! It was undoubtedly one of the longest running cases we’ve dealt with.
The case was subject to frustrating delays caused by a judicial system which is quite obviously creaking under the pressure of the volume of cases it is trying to deal with and an employer which repeatedly refused to acknowledge the strength of the member’s case against it.
It was clear to us from the very beginning that our member was entitled to the money, but the company persisted in its refusal to pay what was owed, trying every trick in the book to undermine the case. I think it genuinely believed that we would eventually give up and walk away on the grounds it was too difficult to try and recover the money. But the case illustrates our central philosophy: we will always fight for the rights of our members at work. In the member’s own words:
“Your last email brought me great relief to think that we can now put behind us the saga of the past few years! The only thing left now is for me to try and express adequately my sincere and heartfelt thanks to you for your unswerving support for my case. Your consummate professionalism, knowledge and tenacity no doubt won the day and I really could not have carried this through without you.”
It was a hard fought case but we were very pleased to be able to support our member through a process which would have been incredibly difficult for him to navigate on his own.
Malign Intent
We deal with a very wide range of cases for our members. In some cases, members are clearly guilty of alleged misconduct; in others guilt is much less clear cut. Sometimes managers are themselves guilty of mismanagement rather than the staff they have charged.
Unsurprisingly, we spend a significant amount of our time of our time fighting to make sure that the Bank behaves reasonably in its conduct towards staff. It shouldn’t be necessary but we live in the real world where glossy employer policy statements are everywhere but simple honesty is rare. Guilty or not, everyone deserves a fair hearing.
But the truth is that it’s not always employers that abuse their power. Progressively, much wider employment law protection against workplace misbehaviour (in the discrimination field in particular) has opened the door to unscrupulous employees setting up cases, designed to secure financial ‘compensation’, when there is limited evidence. Recently we have seen a small number of cases where it has been plain to us, upon a very careful examination of the facts, that people have joined the Union in the hope that we will support cases that simply are not genuine. We are not alone in this.
Employment lawyers regularly handle cases where people have gone to great lengths to construct cases built on a web of lies, with the ultimate aim of extorting money out of their employers, with no concern about who they harm in the process. Very often these individuals have sought to bully the people they work with and these behaviours have extended into their dealings with us.
TBU will not support cases of this sort: we’re not in the business of seeking to destroy innocent people and it would be wholly improper to spend members’ funds fighting cases that are malign in intent. Clearly our resources should be reserved for members who have genuine issues with which they need help. We have a great many of them!