Try for re-employment

Everyone who has anything to do with employment law knows that reinstatement and re-engagement orders are incredibly difficult to get. They’re rare (really, really rare: awarded in something like 0.01% of successful claims) so mostly people don’t even bother asking. That means that even in cases where a tribunal might have made such an order, it doesn’t – because the claimant hasn’t asked.

But if you’ve been unfairly dismissed, you have lost your job when you shouldn’t have. It’s obvious that the best way of making that right is to give you your job back.

So if you win your unfair dismissal case, ask for reinstatement or re-engagement. Put the rarity of such orders out of your mind, and concentrate on the obvious justice of giving you your job back if you shouldn’t have been sacked in the first place.

This became more important with the reduction of the cap on unfair dismissal compensation to a year’s pay. If you’ve lost a modestly-paid job in circumstances that mean you’re going to lose a lot more than that (Michael gives an example of how this can happen here), reinstatement or re-engagement is the only way you can head off those losses. You could point that out when asking for reinstatement or re-engagement.

See earlier posts on re-employment here.