News: Contract Law
Equality training: Employment tribunals 'see 10x increase in equal pay claims'
25 March 2009
The importance of legal training has been highlighted by a ten-fold increase in the number of equal pay cases being brought to employment tribunals.
Figures published by the Tribunals Service show that issues of this sort accounted for a third of all cases brought before the body, totalling more than 60,000 between April 2007 and March 2008.
It states that this is more than three times the number of cases filed in 2005-06, up from 17,268.
The number of sex discrimination cases has increased by 10,000 compared to five years ago, although there was a decrease in the total number during the 2007-08 period.
Overall, there were 40 per cent more employment tribunal claims filed than in the previous year, which the organisation attributes to Working Time Directive cases.
Martin Edwards, head of employment law at Mace and Jones, recently told the BBC that companies must be aware of the pitfalls involved with making redundancies, which could be highlighted through training in this area.
