John Robertson's Page

Employees.org.uk is little more than a web page with a guide to DIY UK employment law: where to look-up the minimim in the shortest time to make a case, either on your own in a tribunal or by persuading a no-win no-fee lawyer to work with you. It lists helplines, automated claims testers, and the sources of case law.

Written at a time of great frustration with an existing union, the site has an ameteur look and has shown some rather extraordinary adverts for teeth-whitening compounds and the like which go some way to reducing its cost.

Frustration is the theme of back-pages of the site, exposing the problem of UK unions using no-win no-fee lawyers on commission for their paying members, and providing implausible accounts locally and nationally to say where the money goes. You could begin to do the calculations for your union. Find web lists of phone contacts so that you can begin to estimate how many staff they have. Look up the number of members on the certification office web site and multiply by the cost of membership. You'll soon have back of envelope figures.

The style of the site is hard to follow as it was written by someone with damaged short-term memory after an accident; it's hard to see a pattern to what's being said on a page. The more popular pages represent a theme of journalistic investigation into unions - mainly Unite or Transport and General. There are also full transcripts of Unison's statements in its own words to a court and a member who it had let down. Unison claimed that it had no contract to provide a service to members; that an email or note from an unpaid rep was sufficient service to a member who had paid subscriptions for thirty years. A more detailed use of the same defence is quoted by UCU - the university and college union who state that their legal service depends on "a number of factors" such as whether a case earns them free publicity, whether they happen to have any money available that hasn't been spent on other things, and basically whether they feel like it. It probably isn't legal. The trades descriptions act on implied contracts probably outlaws the way unions treat their members, but let-down union members are busy trying to recover from stress and get-on with their lives.