What’s that noise….
by Philip
Here is a link to a speech made by Pat McFadden, Minister of State for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, to a recent ACAS CIPD conference.
The Postal Affairs part of that job title is curious. Does it cover love affairs carried out by letter? Or does it mean in charge of the post office? This government seems keen on funny job titles. The Department of Education is currently looking for a Head of Horizon Scanning. What does this mean? It did bring to mind an old joke about why weren’t civil servants allowed to look out the window in the morning……….because they need something to do in the afternoon. Anyway, I digress.
The speech acknowledges that the statutory procedures have not been a success owing to the law of unintended consequences kicking in, resulting in more claims not fewer.
The minister also acknowledges the important role of ACAS in resolving employment disputes and that the idea of time limiting ACAS’ involvement was counter productive.
The noise that could be heard during the minister’s speech was the sound of the clock going back to 2004 to pre- statutory procedure days. When the facts change, the department changes its mind and policy.
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I would love to see a system in which ACAS was forced to look for non-financial tie-breakers to settlement: the dreaded “point of principal” that one of their conciliators told me that he always hated to hear.
Research by Coventry University found that many people’s motives for going to court were much more like people’s motives for getting criminals into a criminal court, and much less about the need to settle financial differences that ministers seem to imagine.
At the moment, lawyers are not in a position to say “I’m in this for for maximum winnings in very little time, and I’ve never worked for the firm we’re talking about, but do you think the employee would settle quicker if you sacked Mr Ramsey who is running the kitche n?”. That’s what a lot of employment claims are really about.
John Robertson said at February 27th, 2008 at 3:43 pm