In cases of unfair dismissal in particular, employment tribunals in England are merely a cushion to suppress what would otherwise be an army of unjustly ousted university (and other) workers.

Just like the groups which bring people together to complain about bullying but actually function to soften the shock of psychological torture in the workplace.

Just like the pseudo-unions including UCU which serve the needs of the employers in selling-out workers’ rights amid spin and collusion.

Just like the masonry of ‘professional organisations’ and ‘research clusters’ who conspire to appropriate public and private funding and steer research and teaching towards commercial and neoliberal political outputs. In so doing they knowingly cut out those lecturers and researchers who threaten to expose and contradict the viciously anti-social and egotistical objectives of the elite caste.

Just like the servant journalists who promote the oppressive neoliberal interests of the university employers through fantastical nationalistic league tables and sensationalistic, opportunistic and speculative news-making.

Just like all of these, the employment tribunals operate to reinforce the oppressive rule of universities over workers.

The reality of the employment tribunal process is that if you are brave enough to confront your employer over abuses and are dismissed as a result, you – and your true loved ones who suffer with and for you – will experience betrayal and desertion from the most perversely unexpected places.

Firstly, your union, if not a part of the original problem, will most likely lead you on and then abandon you to fight your own case, implicitly or openly giving reason to your former employer.

If your next option is legal insurance, expect that the lengths the insurers will go to in order to avoid paying your claim and funding representation will make the employer’s tactics seem to pale in comparison.

If you are too ill to represent your case, you will likely be further sickened by solicitors open to corruption and too keen to play the devil’s advocate.

Supposedly though, the employment tribunal enables self-representation.

While this may seem superficially to render the process more accessible to those without money to fund reliable legal representation, in reality it favours large employers like the universities.

Most universities will not hesitate to expend a vast budget allocation (more than they allow for new books or other essential resources in many cases) on obtaining the most prestigious and connected legal representation available. They will spend hundreds-of-thousands of pounds to defend a claim for a few thousand or even a few hundred pounds so as to prevent precedent passing to law.

The employee almost never has access to such representation and legal aid does not cover representation at employment tribunals.

So, while both sides are theoretically ‘free’ to avoid the costs of representation, the intimidation to workers from the bulky legal muscle fighting for the former employer and the risk of a potential expenses ruling in their favour, is overwhelming.

The worker is necessarily forced to question; not, ‘am I right?’ but, ‘is it worth it?’.

Aside from the disgustingly low capped rate of potential compensation, the unwillingness of tribunals to reinstate employees is a further spit-in-the-face of worker justice.

The false rationality of any argument that reinstatement would be ‘impracticable’ is revealed in the light of a Masonic-style system of employing academics based more on references than merit or their record of honest academic endeavour.

Once, as an academic in Britain, you have reached the stage of employment tribunal, the system has effectively sacrificed you to its underlying values of patriarchy and the internal authority and self-referential definition of justice of the same employer that abused you.

Why? Because by the time you get to the tribunal you have already been ‘tried’ and judged by the university’s internal hearing (even if you did not participate in it), as executed by the same managers who abused you. What is more, this whole banana court has been condoned and its procedures structured by the tribunal system you are now asking to question it.

The closed masonry of the university elite with their secret rituals masked by flatulent rhetoric, will not truly look at your CV for future lecturing or research jobs if you have rejected the fellowship of the patrons and exposed their brutal interests to the public domain (this of course has nothing to do with your academic ability or achievements).

Crucially then, even if your claim is upheld by the tribunal, the low compensation and impossibility of reinstatement are a secret way to condone the employer’s act of dismissing you.

Neither the union nor the press will take a serious interest in the merits of your case or battle to make a difference.

Ultimately then, such a system of auto-referential justice does more to reinforce the employers’ power over the employment relationship than reinstate your right to work after all those years of study.

Without reinstatement, the employer’s actions are effectively condoned as though they cannot be questioned: an employee who has questioned their employer via the employment tribunal cannot be accepted back into the workplace. Only the members of the elite caste (the previously imprisoned or publicly shamed politicians, the health and safety managers who let people die in their universities, the professors who plagiarised their students’ work and put their sticky fingers in the funding pot) can start with a new slate in Britain 2008, usually in a position of promotion rather than demerit.

For these reasons, Cobas UK calls on workers to demand an automatic right to reinstatement or otherwise boycott employment tribunals.

Simultaneously, workers must unite to force the eradication of internal disciplinary ‘trials’, demand free worker representation and redress the unequal power relation in the representation of worker versus employer rights in employment tribunals.

Boycott the employment tribunal for:

1 - An end to internal disciplinary trials

2 - Free worker representation of his/her choice

3 - Financial limit or ban on employer legal representation

4 - Automatic reinstatement rights in the event of the employee’s claim being upheld

5 - Automatic referral for some form of management training, monitoring or removal of managers as appropriate to enable the employee a normal return to work.

At present, it is the employee who is left jobless while the managers who orchestrated their dismissal, even when that dismissal is found to be unfair, remain in their posts and are very often even promoted.

The government, employers and pseudo-unions in Britain rely on the employment tribunal to divert away and cushion revolts against the oppression of the workforce with the rhetoric of an efficient and accessible legal system


COBAS UK
 http://www.cobas.org.uk

COBAS UK: A unionised rank-and-file committee you can trust.