Employment Law Conference - 26 April 2007
On 26th April 2007 Campbell Fitzpatrick held a conference at the Holiday Inn, Belfast on the Statutory Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures. In attendance was a wide spectrum of people from both private and public sector employers in Northern Ireland.
The number of cases that are coming before Employment Tribunals have increased dramatically over recent years and the Government has introduced a mechanism by which employees and employers can resolve their differences in-house as quickly as possible.
Accordingly, the Government have introduced the Employment (NI) Order 2003 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations (NI) 2004 and they came into effect on 3rd April 2005 and they impose new rights and responsibilities on both employers and employees.
From that date all employers and employees have to follow certain procedures for dealing with employee degenerated grievances and with employer generated disciplinary matters against an employee. Failure to adhere to these procedures by either the employer or employee can lead to compensation being increased or decreased (as appropriate) by between 10 – 50%.
At the conference Mr John Guerin outlined the new procedures that apply and they can be summed up as follows…
Grievance Procedure
- An employee must send his/her employer a written statement of grievance.
- Employer must arrange a meeting to discuss the grievance.
- Employee has right of appeal if not happy with the decision. Thereafter, if the employee is still not happy he/she will have to consider Tribunal proceedings.
- Employer must send a written statement to his employee.
- Employer must arrange a meeting to discuss the matter with you.
- Employee has the right of appeal against the employer’s decision.
- Thereafter, if the employee is still unhappy of the outcome of the procedure then Tribunal proceedings may be considered.
It is important to note that whilst the regulations are now just over 2 years of age, the Government has in fact published an independent review of the regulations and are calling for a radical overhaul of the current approach to dealing with employment matters. There are calls for the new regulations to be repealed and for consideration to be given to a faster approach for dealing with straightforward claims for a reformed Tribunal system with simplified procedures and time limits.
As anyone involved in employment law will appreciate the likely outcome of this independent review is even more rules and regulations.
If you have any queries in relation to the Statutory Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures, please do not hesitate to contact our Mr John Guerin on 028 90 327388 or alternative e-mail him at John@cfs-law.com
Click Here To Download The Employment Law Presentation (MS PPT Format, 380KB)