What if anything can you do about the employer who refuses as a matter of ‘policy’ to give references at all?
It is important to comply so far as you possibly can with all case management orders, even if the other side is making it difficult for you by delaying on steps they are supposed to have taken.
If the claimant and respondent in an employment tribunal case are going to negotiate, the time they are most likely to do it is in the last few days before the hearing. Negotiations can disrupt preparation, with potentially disastrous results if they hit a snag at a late stage.
A good reference from your current or former employer can be extremely important if you are looking for a new job. But how can you find out if you are being given a bad reference, and what can you do about it if you are?
A version of the glossary that appears in the book has now been added to the resources page of this blog.
Don’t ever assume that disclosure is completed. One particular point at which to reconsider whether the respondent has disclosed all the documents it ought to have is when you first read its witness statements.
Sometimes it is important to find out whether there are any differences – and if so what – between two very similar documents. A useful quick way of doing that is to read down the last word on each line for each page or paragraph of the two documents you are comparing.
If you want to say in a witness statement that someone said something, just say that they said it.
If you do not have a lawyer or other professional adviser to represent you in the tribunal, you may want to take a friend or relative with you to help you present your case. If you want to share the task of presenting your case with someone else, explain to the tribunal what you want to do.
Most awards of compensation made by the employment tribunals are of fairly modest amounts that are unlikely attract any tax: the sum of money that…