Archive for the 'Rambling' Category

Always keepin’ a man down

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on June 22, 2008
in Discrimination and Rambling
. 5 Comments

I subscribe to the feed at http://wordpress.com/tag/employment/, which I’d only recommend if you’re adept at speed-reading: the amount of content with that tag is too high, and 95% of posts are of little or no interest to the British employment law enthusiast.

It does however turn up the odd gem - such as a particularly irate blogger who tries to make a case that pay inequality between the sexes needs to be measured in light of better social benefits for women. There’s the odd cogent argument, such as a mother who has 51% of staying contact per year receiving 100% of child benefit, but when he spends over 500 words arguing that men should pay a lesser proportion of the TV licence because the programming on TV is so targeted towards women, and that speed cameras unfairly target men because it is they who like to speed, the whole thing collapses into hysterical idiocy. Read it here, and be prepared to raise your eyebrows and be glad you’re not sat in the pub with bubblyian right now.

Reading his other articles, I do wonder at whatever very sad personal story left this man feeling this way. On a quite genuine note, the family justice system (as well as sex discrimination in employment) is under attack from those who feel unjustly treated, and professionals in the system need to look at what they can do to ensure that justice is achieved, and that those who don’t or can’t get the results they want understand the rational reasons why not.

Meanwhile, those who didn’t realise the internet was populated by this sort of comment should go immediately to the spEak You’re bRanes site, for enlightenment on how the non-logical half think.

Suit You

Published
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Usefully Employed
on May 28, 2008
in Discrimination and Rambling
. 0 Comments

An interesting study bears out what I’ve noticed myself - the suit is in decline in the British workplace. This study, by the Aziz Corporation, surveyed employers for their attitudes towards office dress. Less than one in four offices now require men to wear suits, most opting for a ’smart casual’ approach with suits reserved for business meetings (I’d guess with clients or other organisations).

This was the rule in my last employment, and my experience matches the results of the survey - when allowed to dress down, most employees still wish to appear smart and professional. 90% of employees do not believe that wearing a suit necessarily makes you look smart.

Dress codes are symbols of their times, the wigs and gowns worn in court were first donned at a time when they were simply fashionable and smart attire. The demise of the suit can perhaps (and this is only a theory) be linked to the rise of women in professional workplaces. Smart clothing is not so prescriptive for women as it is for men, and once the link between the clothing and the service is broken then the human desire for self-expression comes to the fore.

As a barrister it’s likely I’ll be required to wear a suit to work for many years to come, but at least this means I needn’t get too concerned about fashion when I get up in the morning.

Delusional

Published
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on May 10, 2008
in Rambling and Unfair Dismissal
. 2 Comments

Everyone’s been laughing it up at this case where a man dismissed from his job as a kitchen porter at a hotel brought an unfair dismissal claim, stating that his dismissal had been orchestrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses. According to the ET:

“The Claimant made repeated references in his claim form to secret video recordings carried out on behalf of the Watch Tower Society; he talked about the Watch Tower Society instigating his dismissal; coming into the Hotel to turn staff against him; spreading rumours about his sexuality; preventing witnesses from assisting him; installing secret cameras in changing rooms and in his room; falsely imprisoning him in a Psychiatric Hospital; and showing the tapes to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair.”

It isn’t funny though, not really. As much as us lawyers smirk in amusement at outlandish and delusional claims in front of the court, take a moment to put yourself in the shoes of the Claimant himself. I can’t quite imagine what it must be like to be so utterly convinced that you’ve (a) been wronged and (b) that everyone’s been corrupted against you. In practice once I dealt with a county court claim where the Defendant would write letters to the county court that were ten or twelve pages of bitter anguish at not one, not two, but four of the district judges there having been bribed to find against him. DJ’s must be cheap - the claim was only for about £1500, but what can you do about people like this? In the tribunal claim it was found that the Judge had no right to involve the offical solicitor in the case, and simply had to deal with the Claimant’s claim as it was presented.

This is off-topic, but I think for practical purposes the idea that you humour someone in this state is barbaric. Is it right that if someone doesn’t actually pose a physical risk to themselves and others we’ll allow them to subject themselves to so much misery without intervention?

Solicitors - Qualified for…

Published
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Usefully Employed
on April 23, 2008
in Lawyers, Rambling and Solicitors
. 5 Comments

The Law21 blog entry on marketing has again inspired me to rant on the future of the legal profession.

‘Your solicitor, qualified to answer’ is a major national advertising and PR campaign to promote solicitors to the public.

Our aim is to encourage consumers to use solicitors by promoting their services and highlighting the unique selling points solicitors have to offer. Running from April to June, the campaign will focus on the reasons why solicitors are the only sensible choice for consumers. They are:

  • more expert and reliable than other providers of legal or quasi-legal services
  • properly regulated
  • excellent value for money 

 … or so say the Law Society in their recent marketing campaign to raise the ‘brand’ of solicitors. I’d edit the list as follows:

  • more expert and reliable than [many] other providers of legal or quasi-legal services [but are increasingly inferior to some]
  • properly regulated [and insured for when they fail to be more expert and reliable than the other side]
  • excellent value for money.

I don’t want to be confrontational; there are solicitors firms out there that do all the Law Society says, but they are the minority. Use a solicitor ten times over rather than some internet cowboys, but the badge of ’solicitor’ itself is no guarantee of quality. Solicitors should be the cornerstone of reliability and expertise, but firms must make some real changes. Taking the Law Society’s list:

  • Expertise: I started off a solicitor in a high street firm which did a good amount of employment law for the firm’s size. I moved from there to a consultancy / insurance company you’ve never heard of, which in respect of its consultancy at least is completely unregulated. The quality at the latter was ten times better - the expertise and dedication to employment law was enormous. I’m not saying the law firm wasn’t competent - it was that and more - but it didn’t have the same excellence. I attribute the excellence at the consultancy to the commercial pressure of competition. If you’re Bloggs & Co Solicitors then you immediately have a badge stuck to your chest, and the public will reckon you the best man for the job because of it. If you’re Bloggs Limited and you want to succeed, you’d better make a name for yourself, get out there and network, and deliver on your commitments.
  • Regulation: Boy do you need that. I wouldn’t for a second disagree. When you provide legal services you play with people’s lives, and they need a fundamental reassurance that there is a legal framework for them to seek redress when you cock it up. What’s wrong with the system is the regulator itself - the SRA. Its huge, monolithic, inefficient, and worst of all its one-size-fits-all style of regulation prevents firms from competing effectively. You also need compulsory insurance for professional negligence, and most other professionals would do a double take at the premiums solicitors have to pay.
  • Excellent value for money: Where solicitors lack at the moment is in charging innovation, as the Law21 blog notes every couple of weeks or so, and as I’ve rambled about previously.

This is all terribly sad, as it commercialises the role of solicitor which in previous days wasn’t simply a job, but a vocation. But solicitors haven’t changed for the worst, they’ve simply been outpaced by modern society. They must adapt and they must survive. The Law Society campaign is completely backwards - it tries to educate people that solicitors are the answer to their problems when this message is becoming less and less true every day. Their time and resources would be much better spent in engaging with their own profession on how to rescue the brand of ’solicitor’ and invest it with some meaning in the modern age.

Chefs

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on April 21, 2008
in Rambling
. 1 Comment

Charon QC, quoting The Prisoners Voice, quoting the Telegraph, reports on a case where a chef was prosecuted for hitting his brother over the head with a shovel following a row on whether or not Shepherd’s Pie properly comes with a layer of tomatoes on top. Of course it shouldn’t, but unfortunately sometimes does.

This reminded me that during my admittedly-high-volume employment law insured advice days, we had an extraordinary number of hotels and restaurants ring to say that their chefs were either mentally ill, or had been convicted of a violent offence, or often both. What is it about being a chef that triggers these mental problems? Has any research been done? Is it the job, or is it the predisposition of those it attracts?

I’d like some answers.

Law in the 21st Century

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on March 26, 2008
in Employment Tribunal, Lawyers, Rambling and Solicitors
. 4 Comments

The Law21 blog, and this post in particular, should be compulsory reading for any member of the British legal profession. The focus on new provision of legal services tends to concentrate on work for individuals - divorces, probate, and so on. In employment law circles however the change is already happening. First Assist, Peninsula, Croner Consulting, EEF and the rest are hardly household names but between them conduct a huge part of Respondents’ litigation in the tribunals.

Many employers simply want to pay an annual premium and be insured against any claims they receive. Any large employer, even if it is well behaved, will receive a claim one day,  and fewer and fewer of these are farmed out to traditional law firms and counsel. If you are a commercial company who has sold an insurance policy then it makes much more financial sense to hire staff yourselves to conduct litigation and advocacy than to farm it out. Why? Because you retain the profit margin. Without any SRA or Bar Council regulation you can also be ultra-competitive in your hourly rates which means you achieve a better loss ratio for the insurance company.

Counsel still have their place for complex cases, or for where you simply must have a bum sat on a tribunal seat somewhere far away at very short notice, but as the Law21 blog notes: traditional law firms must forge alliances with the larger providers if they are to retain the work.

Employment is ahead of the game as tribunals don’t require a special right of audience, and (insured) work can therefore be undertaken by companies without any form of regulation at all. Once Alternative Business Structures and “soft-touch” regulation comes then all manner of commercial legal areas will go the same way, and it’ll be sink or swim for law firms and lawyers. Being legally qualified will be no guarantee of a place in the new order.

Na zdrowie!

Published
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Usefully Employed
on March 17, 2008
in Rambling, Status and Usefully Employed
. 0 Comments

It’s been a while - apologies. The reason for my absence was a holiday to Wrocław.

Wroclaw

It is a beautiful city and I recommend it to you. The trip was also my first to Eastern Europe - Prague, Krakow and their ilk may be old hat to most people but I didn’t quite know what to expect. Poland is interesting because of its relationship with the UK. Although it’s a bit OT, I thought I’d set down a few of my thoughts.

Everyone will tell you that the UK entered the war as a response to Hitler invading Poland, yet how we acquitted ourselves afterwards is far less noble. During the war over six million Poles lost their lives. When we look at our own experience of WWII with misty eyes, consider the experience of anyone unfortunate enough to be sandwiched between Nazi Germany on one side, and Joe Stalin on the other. In Germany’s possession for over a century before Hitler came to power, Wrocław under the Nazis underwent ethnic cleansing of almost all its Jews and and many of its ethnic Poles. In 1945 its German commanders refused to yield to the Red Army, turning the city into an all-too-easily-beaten fortress using forced labour by citizens who were shot as deserters if they refused to help with fortifications, or tried to evacuate the city. The fighting almost all took place from house to house, with both sides setting fire to whole districts. It’s not known precisely how many people died during the 82-day siege; estimates range from 40,000 to 170,000. What is known is that after 1945 the city’s population was at under a third of its pre-war level.

The view of many historians is that the UK and the USA, keen to secure agreement and peace with the Russian Army, let Poland down. The country had made the fourth-largest troop contribution to the Allied war effort, yet after the war Stalin was allowed to keep the parts of Poland he had seized in 1939, with the size of the country being “made up” by additions from subjugated Germany. This resulted in some of the largest movements of people seen in human history. Stalin was also given free rein over the post-war installation of government, producing a repressive Soviet-style communist society that wouldn’t finally crumble until 1990. Although the West can say that opposition to Stalin may have been impossible, it nonetheless had a hand in something deeply immoral.

Now Poland and the UK are affecting each other all over again - over half a million Poles have come to work here since their accession to the EU in 2004. This has been economically beneficial for Britain (oh yes it has, naysayers) and certainly beneficial for the workers themselves - the average salary in Poland is around £5,000 per annum, compared to a UK minimum wage of around £11,000 for full time work. If you live in a city I’ll bet you don’t live more than ten minutes drive from a Polish delicatessen, and certainly where I live huge old-fashioned analogue satellite dishes have appeared on the front of houses, with ‘PolSat’ emblazoned across the centre.

The economic consequences to Poland’s own infrastructure have been far less rosy - if a Wrocławian wants an operation he’ll have to wait a long time; around a fifth of the city’s doctors move away to work in other European health services. All over the city, a “brain drain” is occurring, with young Poles finding the wonderful Gothic architecture and beautiful cobbled streets a poor choice compared to quadrupling their pay packet and seeing the world. Britain’s economy has outperformed most other Western countries due largely to its Eastern European workers, but once again we’ve taken a lot away from those left behind.

Poles are now changing the UK employment law scene too. Were it not for the Polish pickers, packers, pluckers and plumbers the pool of potential agency workers would never have been there to force the evolution of this area of law. As I’ve previously said, rights for agency workers are a real political hot potato, with unions and employers’ federations dead set against one another on the importance of the flexibility that our agency-working Europeans provide. Now that many newspapers have revealed the influx of Poles has either decreased or that they’re even leaving, it may be that the Poles depart having made a lasting impression on even my obscure sphere of operation - employment law. So now I urge you to go and spend some of your hard-earned cash seeing beautiful Wrocław, you won’t regret it, and you’ll be paying them something back.

Oh, and if you were wondering, it’s pronounced Vrotswav. Roll the r.

“Why the fuck should I work for Pinsent Masons?”

Published
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Usefully Employed
on February 6, 2008
in Lawyers, Rambling and Usefully Employed
. 1 Comment

… is a search term typed into Google, by which someone came across my post on PM’s diversity plaudit. Stats like this are fascinating, but frustrating too. Do they work there already? Are they thinking of applying there? Will Pinsent’s gay-friendly atmosphere be a turn-off or a turn-on?

 I’ll never know, and it makes me sad.

Unfair Competition

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on February 6, 2008
in Lawyers and Rambling
. 2 Comments

The dispute between the Legal Services Commission (providers of what used to be known as Legal Aid) and barristers is fascinating. Read one man’s view of it here.

If you’re several thousand employees, you don’t like your new pay deal, and you go on strike, then few would argue against your right to do so. The right “to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of [one's] interests” is even guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights. Yet, when the individuals in question are all self-employed, and are dealing with the government as their main customer, this is alleged to breach competition law. I don’t like this. Preventing a profession from campaigning against government practice is not a very laudable use of competition law. It also smacks of vendetta - the argument has to my knowledge never been used against GPs, who are in a similar negotiating position and for whom the BMA campaigns vociferously.

My own view is that the whole chaotic mess shows the government in a very poor light indeed. The disingenuous approach, which may well affect the quality of defence available to those accused of complex crimes, has to be seen against the budget they’re trying to reduce - £105 million. Seem a lot? Not when you consider that this year the Ministry of Justice spent £176 million on a computer system that they then threw in the bin because it was going to cost £900 million-odd more. Quite why barristers are seem as greedy, yet software contractors are always given a blank cheque, is a mystery to me.

Employment Judges

Published
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Usefully Employed
on January 16, 2008
in Disciplinary, Dispute Resolution regulations, Employment Tribunal and Rambling
. 0 Comments

Employment tribunal chairmen are now renamed Employment Judges - a change which highlights the change in philosophy and attitude in the Tribunal, which seems to completely contrast with the changes occuring in the ‘normal’ courts system.

The tribunal is supposed to be informal, its procedures pragmatic, and its language accessible. So much so, in fact, that in normal circumstances you can’t get legal aid for an ET hearing no matter what your means. Yet look at the developments:

  • They’re now chaired by Judges;
  • In 2004 the existing 21 Tribunal Rules exploded to 61;
  • We have CMDs, PHRs, strike-outs, pre-acceptance procedures;
  • More costs orders against unreasonable litigants;
  • The utterly ridiculous ET1 forms:

Comment has been made in the past on the wording of the standard form ET1, which the Government insists all litigants must now complete in order to bring a claim before the Employment Tribunal. …those who design these forms may care to undertake basic instruction in employment law. - HHJ Peter Clark,  Ellis v Ministry of Defence UKEAT/0034/07

  • …not to mention the impossibility in the first year or two of submitting the blasted things without having to resort to filling them in by hand;
  • And let us not forget the convoluted and spectacular failure of the Dispute Resolution regulations, taking grievances - which had on occasion solved the problem - and transforming them into a legalistic over-technical minefield, together with obliterating the chance of anyone approaching them constructively.

So would we say the Tribunals are becoming more cuddly? Or less cuddly? A cynical view is that this sort of system leads to less hearings at the Tribunal, and thus less money spent, as one side or the other wins or loses on a technicality long before the Tribunal ever gets a chance to fully assess the merits of the case - or simply can’t face the attrition of yet another meeting. An even more cynical view is that the slow walk to enforced Acas-controlled or accredited mediation has even more risk attached of bumping up the legal bills.