Conciliation workload

Almost half of the cases received by Acas for conciliation from the Employment Tribunal Service involved unfair dismissal, according to the conciliation service’s latest annual report.

Unfair dismissal cases totalled 64,878 or 46% of the 141,663 cases involving Acas in 2009-10. The number of cases was up by almost 10,000 on the year before when they accounted for 40% of cases.

Referrals involving the Wages Act were the second most numerous with 42,103 cases or 30% of the total. Numbers were up by over 10,000 on the year before when they accounted for 22% of cases.

Breach of contract cases ranked third in number with over 35,000 or a quarter of cases, Acas said.

Equal pay cases on the other hand showed a decline with 32,713 cases accounting for just under a quarter (23%) of total cases. The previous year's figures were 48,560 representing 35% of all cases.

The service also had a conciliation role in 905 collective disputes last year — down from 966 the year before.

General pay disputes — 160 in number — accounted for 18% of all disputes received by Acas. But as for the year before, most cases — 251 or 28% of the total — involved "other pay and conditions of employment" disputes.

Redundancy disputes ranked fourth in terms of numbers and accounted for 12% of cases, but they were almost double the number received in 2007-08 before the recession hit, when they accounted for only 6% of cases.

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