Employment Tribunals

gambitt

gambitt

gambitt

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
4,378
Has anyone had any success or experience with employment tribunals?

I will keep this to bullet points to make it simpler:

  • Myself and a few other colleagues were arrested at work in April on suspicion of fraud (in relation to an offence OUTSIDE of work)
  • 5 weeks later two of them were cautioned since the offence was not that serious
  • The police are trying to issue the rest of us cautions because they believe we were involved but are unable to do so because we obviously did not admit to anything (I realise already some police officers on this forum will not believe this part - the only "evidence" they have is the word of one person who does not like any of us).
  • We believe the police made a huge mistake by acting on faulty information but now they are embarrassed so they are trying to "sell" us cautions despite having no evidence against us.
  • We have told the police to stuff their cautions and they can charge us if they like. They have not done this.
  • Our employers are embarrassed because the arrests were done at work (out of convenience for the police :rolleyes: ) and their important clients are aware of what happened.
  • They held disciplinary meetings and sacked the guys who were cautioned.
  • A few days later the rest of us were called for meetings and even though we have not been charged or cautioned they stated that "the burden of proof is not the same for employers as it is for the courts" and sacked us anyway (citing gross misconduct and bringing the company into disrepute)
  • We are going to go through their appeal process (which will probably end up with the same result since it's done in-house)
  • They made a few small mistakes during the disciplinary procedure such as only giving us 4 days to prepare for our meetings instead of 5 which is stated in their policy. They also cited "fraud" as a reason for dismissal in their closing statement without using the prefix of "alleged" (since it's not proven)

So after the appeal we will have to consider employment tribunal proceedings. Obviously I will speak to my solicitor later this week but I was just wondering if anyone here has first hand experience with these things. I assume we have a case for unfair dismissal since they are completely ignoring the fact that we were not cautioned or charged with any offence. It seems like they are making it up as they go along.

At this stage we realise we won't get our jobs back so we just looking for some compensation from them. Is that likely to happen?
 
Morba said:
you didnt admit anything.... so you did do something?
Click to expand...

Read it again. I said "obviously we didn't admit to anything".

You cannot be cautioned unless you admit to the offence.

There's a whole thread about what happened that I posted in here back in April.
 
dont think i say the thread, sorry.

i know what you said, hence me sauing 'you didnt admit to anything...'
to save me searching, did you do something?
 
No I didn't. I only said the admitting part to point out that we cannot be cautioned (and we had no reason to admit anything)
 
Cheers Beerbaron.

I've read about a case where a guy was accused of rape by a fellow female employee, he was arrested, went to court, was found not guilty and the girl was discovered to have mental health problems but he was sacked anyway due to the "burden of proof" argument. I'm not sure if those type of cases went to tribunal though. Amazing how employers can just use "reasonable grounds" or whatever and completely disregard the legal system.
 
I'm currently awaiting hearing at work for disciplinary for gross misconduct myself, I was charged of drugs related offense (Cannabis, get over it) but that isn't a disciplinary, it's the bringing company in to disrepute which is. The trouble is, this is always worded so much so that it's a massive grey area. What is to say that you did bring it in to disrepute? Lose clients? Not wanting to be dealt with again? It's so fluffy which I believe is done for the purpose of getting rid of people.
I was honest from the start, completely so *too honest* but it is still looking like action taken of dismissal for the above, even though nothing was outed and no one knows.

I've had people looking in to the times taken against what is documented and how they deal with themselves through the procedure so all this stuff is very useful information to have, like you have been. I would give it a shot as it's not a fair treatment in my eyes.
 
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