Last week UNISON (Britain’s biggest trade union, with members in the public services and the essential utilities) applied to the High Court to judicially review the Ministry of Justice’s decision to introduce employment tribunal fees from 29 July 2013. UNISON argues that these charges will make it ‘virtually impossible’ for workers to exercise their employment rights.
UNISON wrote to the Ministry of Justice on 1 June 2013 stating that it would lodge proceedings if the introduction of fees went ahead. The union has outlined the legal arguments it intends to put to the Court:
- Introducing fees will prevent people exercising their EU rights. UNISON envisages that reasonable people will not litigate to vindicate their EU rights given that the new fee regime will impose fees which will often be greater than the expected compensation, even if the claims are successful.
- Introducing fees breaches the EU principle of equivalence. UNISON states that fees are not payable in most First-Tier Tribunal claims, a similar tribunal at the equivalent level in the judicial hierarchy to the employment tribunal.
- Charging fees amounts to indirect discrimination because they will have a disproportionate adverse impact on women. Given that women will not, if they earn an average income, be entitled to any remission of fees in a tribunal, UNISON states that it is difficult to see how that impact could be said to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
This is an interesting development and may mean that there is at least a delay in the fees coming into force on 29 July 2013.
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