Evidence submitted by Thompsons Solicitors
SUMMARY
— Thompsons provides a wide range of
free services to trade union members.
— Extensive use of CCFAs.
— CCFAs have enabled the union movement
to offer entirely free personal injury cover to their members
and their members' families.
— Compensation culture does not exist.
— Insurers exploiting the notion of
compensation culture to push for regressive change in the handling
of personal injury claims.
— Personal injury case intake substantially
down.
— Legislating to deal with the perception
of compensation culture is entirely illogical.
— The law on negligence does not need
clarifying. It has been laid down for years and is understood.
— Firms, but not trade unions, that
refer people and advertise CFAs should be subject to regulation.
— A snapshot of the financial health
of Britain's largest general insurers shows their profits going
up, not down.
— The ELCI crisis was brought on the
insurers by themselves.
— No empirical evidence to justify
the insurers' claim that 40% of costs are lawyers fees.
— Delay is substantially down to insurers,
not claimants.
— No demand being made of insurers
to reward employers who have good health and safety practices.
— De-lawyering the litigation process
results in unfairness and under-settlement.
— A system where the defendants determine
who the claimant may have as their expert undermines the fairness
of the system.
— Insurers are losing the challenges
they bring to what they claim to be disproportionate costs.
— The use of a computer system for
damages assessment is both absurd and potentially dangerous.
— BTE insurance is bolted on to policies
without the insured's permission and places the lawyers running
cases under immense pressure to settle as quickly as possible,
at a low sum.
— Increasing the small claims limit
only suits the insurers.
— Restricting access to justice by
removing the right to representation runs the risk of political
and industrial alienation.
INTRODUCTION
Thompsons is the UK's largest PI law firm, with
23 offices across all 3 UK jurisdictions. We have around 70,000
cases at any one time, the majority of our cases are for trade
union members (and their families).
Throughout its 85 year existence Thompsons has
refused as a matter of principle to act for defendants. We believe
we are uniquely placed to comment, from the claimant and trade
union member perspective, on the issues being considered by the
Committee.
Thompsons and its union clients operate free
legal assistance schemes. Trade union members and their families
can take advantage of a range of legal services from personal
injury cover, through free legal advice on non employment issues,
to employment law advice and representation and even wills and
conveyancing. Almost all the services (save conveyancing which
is at a highly competitive rate) are offered free.
In personal injury cases the unions use specialist
law firms such as Thompsons. Since the introduction of Collective
Conditional Fee Agreements (CCFA's) it has been possible to guarantee
no deductions at all are made from the compensation, whether or
not the claim is successful.
We back the unions' comments, which refer members
and advertise their legal services, that they should not be subject
to regulation.
Although this evidence is to the Committee's
inquiry on compensation culture, Thompsons believes that the inquiry
on small claims is equally fundamental to the debate around compensation
culture. This is all part of a general acceptance of "crisis"
in the personal injury (work and non work) insurance market and
is part of an insurance driven agenda to limit their expenditure
by limiting claimants' access to independent advice.
Thompsons believes that the right of individuals
to receive damages if they have been injured due to negligence
and their right to representation is under threat.
REAL INJURIES,
REAL PEOPLE
Over the last 10 years negligent employers have
paid out over £3 billion in compensation to staff who have
sustained physical and psychological injuries at work. This figure
may appear dramatic, but it reflects the seriousness of the issue
of workplace health and safety. Much of this compensation has
to be fought for through the legal system.
Here are some examples of the sort of people
that Thompsons represents on instruction from the unions.
Mrs F, a nurse, fractured her toe when
injured at work. Her claim settled for £1,050. The claimant
has been very nervous of the litigation process and would not
have made the claim without the backing of her trade union and
the legal assistance it provided.
Mr M, employed as a patient shuttle driver
by an NHS Trust, was assaulted at work by a volunteer ambulance
driver. He suffered a broken rib and a bump on the back of his
head. The case was complex due to the issue of liability and the
difficulty in obtaining documents about the assailant. The claimant
had some difficulty understanding the legal process, and without
legal representation from his union he would not have pursued
the case beyond the initial denial of liability by his employer.
Miss B was travelling on a London bus
when the driver closed the doors on her foot, ripping the nail
off. She was off work for a week and a half. Initially she corresponded
with the bus company herself and they made an offer to her of
£1,000. On consulting Thompsons she discovered she could
also claim for her loss of earnings and also that she had a contractual
obligation to repay sick pay to her employers in the event of
a successful third party claim. She has been advised that the
claim is worth in the region of £2,000.
COMPENSATION CULTURE
Compensation culture does not exist in Britain.
The Better Regulation Task Force said so, and the government's
own statistics show that the number of personal injury claims
are down. Employers liability claims dropped 20% last year.
There may be a host of reasons for this drop
in cases. The drop may be a reflection of better health and safety
or of the move from more traditional industries to less dangerous
occupations. It may reflect less union density. There may be an
impact from the proliferation of claims companies. People may
actually be being turned off making a claim by the whole notion
of a compensation culture as it involves making a fuss and is
as such inherently "un-British".
Unfortunately, the decline in claims does not
mean that there are fewer accidents. Health and Safety Executive
statistics suggest some reduction in accidents but not of this
magnitude. We have been working with the unions to raise awareness
of trade union legal services and people's rights to claim. Our
view and the unions' view is that people should not have to suffer
in silence and that poor health and safety practices should be
exposed and corrected.
We carried out a nationwide survey of 500 people.
This suggested that there is widespread ignorance of the right
to claim and that people believe more should be done to increase
awareness of that right.
— 85% of employees questioned believed
that more should be done to inform workers of their rights to
claim if employer negligence has caused them to be injured.
— This figure rises to 91% in the manufacturing
and construction industries, and, regionally, to 93% in Greater
London, and 94% in Northern Ireland and Wales.
— The majority of respondents listed
three key players—trade unions, government and employers—as
needing to take the lead in raising awareness of people's rights
to claim.
The Committee has heard from the Lord Chief
Justice that in his view there is no compensation culture. The
same has been said on numerous occasions by the Lord Chancellor.
THE PERCEPTION
OF A
COMPENSATION CULTURE
As it is clear that there is no compensation
culture in Britain, the Compensation Bill describes compensation
culture as "a perception" and suggests that it is necessary
to legislate for this perception.
This is an entirely illogical position.
If people started to keep guns to protect themselves
against a perceived threat of burglars the government would publicise
statistics and call on individuals not to rise to hysteria.
In its reaction to Anne McIntosh's Private Members
Bill on the right of householders and shopkeepers to use greater
force against burglars, the government showed its distaste of
responding to perception rather than fact. And yet responding
to a perception is exactly what the government is doing with compensation
culture.
When people have started, without justification,
to panic buy petrol and there are queues at filling stations the
government has sought to inject a sense of realism and calm. It
has not pandered to the panic and inflamed it. And yet with its
reaction to the perception of a compensation culture, peddled
by the insurers and the media, it is behaving as the worst panic
buyer.
Thompsons can offer the Committee many examples
of how the media uses compensation culture to describe almost
any compensation claim. One recent one was a particularly serious
distortion of the facts.
Gavin Bassie, a fire-fighter, suffered a catastrophic
knee injury in a fall during a PT exercise on a dusty floor that
ended his 13-year career. The press and the Merseyside Fire Authority,
have sought to present the case as compensation culture, when
it is in fact anything but. The Fire Authority was in breach of
the Health and Safety at Work regulations.
Mr Bassie originally offered to settle his claim
without recourse to lawyers, for £40,000. By refusing to
admit liability and by defending Mr Bassie's claim all the way
to the Court of Appeal, the Fire Authority has been landed with
a £200,000 bill for damages and costs.
The Court did not believe the Fire Brigade's
witnesses, and criticised them heavily for the way in which they
investigated the accident.
However, the court did not suggest that anything
onerous needed to be done to prevent further similar accidents.
The floor simply had to be cleaned before PT exercises.
Yet the chief fire officer has sought to hide
his Brigade's failings by a gross over-reaction including a running
ban and staging a media campaign which seeks to present Mr Bassie's
claim as more evidence of compensation culture.
He has also attacked the right of fire fighters
to claim compensation when they have been injured as a result
of their employer's negligence and claims that the case will lead
to cuts and a recruitment freeze.
This is just one example of how the notion of
a compensation culture leads to unnecessary risk averseness in
public bodies. Rather than a genuine fear of claims, compensation
culture is being used as an excuse to attack claimants and shape
policy. The government should condemn such reactions rather than
fuel them by attempting to legislate against a perception.
The Bassie case is also evidence of why the
law on negligence does not need to be changed or clarified. The
law has been set down for years. It is perfectly understood by
those who need to understand it. Employers and insurers will however
always deny negligence when they defend a case. That is nothing
to do with the law being unclear. Attempting to change or clarify
it will simply result in more money for lawyers to argue what
it means.
THE INSURANCE
INDUSTRY
The debates around compensation culture and
raising the small claims limit are insurance industry driven.
Legislating against a "perceived" compensation culture,
or cutting lawyers out of the claims process suits only the defendants.
The insurance industry is a major employer,
a major income generator and as such a major part of the UK economy.
Insurance impacts in one form or another, on virtually every household
in the country. It is understandable therefore that when the insurance
industry speaks through the Association of British Employers (ABI)
or individually, people in government listen.
A SNAPSHOT OF
THE FINANCIAL
HEALTH OF
BRITAIN'S
LARGEST GENERAL
INSURERS
Aviva
Aviva is the world's sixth largest insurance
group and the biggest in the UK. It's main UK brands are Norwich
Union, Norwich Union Direct and the RAC.
Aviva Group's operating profit before tax
for 2004 was £2.3 billion, up from £1.9 billion in 2003
and £1.7 billion in 2002.
RBS Insurance
Royal Bank of Scotland Insurance is the second
largest general insurance provider in the UK. It's subsidiaries
include Direct Line, Churchill Insurance, Green Flag and NIG.
Operating profit for the RBS Group as a whole
was up 15% from £7.1 billion in 2003 to £8.1 billion
in 2004. In 2002 its profits had risen 12% to £6.4 billion.
AXA
AXA became a major UK insurer in 1999 when
it acquired Guardian Royal Exchange through its subsidiary Sun
Life and Provincial Holdings.
In 2004 its UK insurance value by gross written
premium was £1.9 billion. Its UK general insurance business
posted a revenue increase of 4.3% to £3.1 billion, that itself
up from £2.9 billion in 2003.
Allianze AG
Allianze is one of Europe's largest financial
services companies. In March 2005 it released a breakdown of its
performance in the UK for the first time, showing that pre-tax
profit for its UK division rose 56% from £145 million to
£227 million in 2004. Operating profit rose to £218
million, against £159 million in 2003.
This snapshot shows just how profitable the
insurance industry is. If its profits are being hit by rising
costs in PI claims, then that is not reflected in the evidence
we have found.
Insurance industry profits make it a very powerful
lobby group. The risk is that what it says becomes fact.
Fact 1—Employers Liability Insurance (ELCI)
"crisis"
The perceived "crisis" in Employers
Liability Insurance (ELCI) led to the abortive Department of Work
and Pensions (DWP) pilot. Premiums were soaring and "something"
had to be done.
The fact was that—as the appended article
by the former Editor of the Insurance Times makes clear—there
had been an irresponsible race to the bottom on ELCI premium prices.
We were, in the UK, massively out of step with the rest of Europe
on premium rates. But instead of a thorough investigation as to
why ELCI was going up to such an extent, there was a push for
significant changes to be made to the way in which claims were
dealt with.
Unrealistic premiums, combined with factors
that suggested insurer incompetence rather than anything else,
led to the problem that the DWP sought to tackle.
The insurers had been exposed on asbestos claims.
If they had properly read the clear signs from the early 1900's
they would have realised that this was a disaster waiting to happen.
Insurers had also had their fingers burned in the late 1980's
stock market crash and were seeking to recoup some of their losses
from natural disasters.
The "crisis" in ELCI had little to
do with the ELCI market or the PI claims process and everything
to do with insurer incompetence and having to pay out on policies
they naively assumed would not lead to claims.
Fact 2—The current personal injury claim
system is too slow and too costly
The ABI has complained that costs in personal
injury cases are soaring. They say that the current protocols
that set down clear rules and timelines for both parties to follow
are not sufficient for the efficient (ie speedy) disposal of cases.
The ABI claims that 40% of costs are lawyers fees.
Yet the UK court system actively prevents solicitors
from running up unreasonable costs and encourages challenges to
any that are unreasonable. The ABI has offered no empirical evidence
to justify its 40% figure despite Thompsons and others having
repeatedly disputed it and asking them to produce the facts behind
the figures. It is notable that this figure bears no relation
to Thompsons figures on case costs notwithstanding that we are
the largest trade union personal injury firm in the UK.
We dispute the reliability of the ABI's figures.
Even if they were correct then questions would need to be asked
about what is responsible for them. In Thompsons' experience it
is the changes that insurance companies have made to their methods
of claims handling over the past 5 years. In order to cut costs,
they have "dummed-down" by doing away with the old style
claims inspectors who would discuss claims and settle legitimate
ones quickly, leaving instead an insufficient number of experienced
claims handlers.
Insurers could simply follow protocols and respond
to claims more quickly rather than, in our experience, often only
responding to a claimant's solicitor after court proceedings have
been issued. In that way claims could be progressed to a speedy
conclusion, with minimal costs.
Both issues have been transmogrified into fact.
This is what has happened with the compensation culture and the
alleged "facts" that back that up. No one is turning
the tables back on insurers and questioning their motivation.
And no one is demanding any return from the
insurers for any of the change that they seek to impose. There
is no request for a guarantee from the insurers that change in
their favour, which must lead to savings, will be made public
and passed on in the form of reduced premiums (which would in
turn encourage good practice by employers). If we believe in the
principle of the Polluter pays then those who do not should surely
be rewarded.
CONDITIONAL FEE
AGREEMENTS (CFAS)
The committee is examining the way lawyers'
fees are arranged, in particular Conditional Fee Arrangements.
It is significant that the impact of these are being considered
at the same time as the furore around deductions from damages
by compensation claims handlers generally, and by some firms handling
coal miners' claims under the health coal scheme.
Since their introduction Collective Conditional
Fee Arrangements (CCFAs)—CFAs for membership organisations—have
allowed trade unions to provide high quality legal services free
to their members. To enable trade unions to take on the immense
power and seemingly bottomless coffers of the insurance industry,
unions had to make deductions from members' compensation. This
ensured that the unions had the funds to pay for the level of
expert representation that members should reasonably be able to
expect. CCFAs have allowed the trade unions to move away from
deductions and offer a wholly free service.
The furore that has surrounded the deductions
made by some areas of the NUM in the coal health scheme shows
how sensitive the issue of members not getting 100% of their compensation
really is.
There are sound and valid reasons why areas
of the NUM have made deductions. The practice started in 1993
in Durham, for example, when the last pit closed. With no pits
and no membership income the union had to secure funds to allow
them to continue operating.
In mining communities, the union operates as
a social welfare organisation, often as the first port of call
for former miners, their families and dependents rather than the
local authority or Citizens' Advice Bureau.
In the Durham coalfield the Durham Miners Association
has 9,000 members and represents 3,000 next of kin. There are
15,000 retired or redundant miners.
The voluntary deductions taken from 1993 were
used to back the successful legal test cases, which led to the
introduction of the Miners' Compensation Schemes, and opened the
door to more than 750,000 claims by injured miners, their families
or dependants of deceased miners.
The money deducted now is being fed back into
the mining communities in a variety of ways including delivery
of social welfare services, provision of school uniforms, transport
to and representation at Social Security and Medical Appeals Tribunals
and delivery of the Concessionary Fuel Allowance scheme.
People who attack the deductions made on behalf
of the NUM forget that the practice of making deductions from
compensation payments was widespread in the trade union movement
before the introduction of Collective Conditional Fee Agreements,
enabling the Davids of the trade union movement to take on the
Goliaths of the corporate and insurance world.
Any attempt by the insurance industry to limit
when the cost of using lawyers may be recovered, by devices such
as fixing costs and increasing the small claims limit, runs the
risk that unions will be forced to reconsider how they fund their
legal schemes. Deductions may creep back.
It is possible that this is what the insurers
want to achieve. By squeezing the ability of claimants to get
funding for or even questioning the legitimacy of their having
independent advice they may force all those not on one of their
panels to make a deduction from damages. The claimant will be
forced to make a choice between a service that whilst free is
in the thrall and pay of the insurance industry or having a deduction
made from their compensation.
CREEPING POST
HOC RATIONALISATION
Under the guise of tackling a compensation culture,
or even addressing the perception of it, the insurance industry
is making suggestions that are gaining ground and credibility.
Limited lawyer involvement
De-lawyering the litigation process is suggested
by the insurance industry as the answer to any problems there
may be with the current system. This is superficially attractive.
Regrettably our experience of dealing with insurance company Intervention
Units (departments within insurance companies whose task is to
capture as many cases as possible from accidents and deal with
them direct and without lawyer involvement), or of picking up
the pieces for a claimant whose claim has been dealt with by a
claims company is that it results in unfairness and under settlement.
People have their cases wrongly rejected completely
(how does the claimant know they in fact have a case if no one
is fighting their corner?) or under settled either in damages
or because the medical evidence obtained is at the wrong level
or from doctors on the payroll of the insurance industry.
Despite these risks, in the abortive DWP pilot
and through recent proposals from the CJC, restricting claimant
access to lawyers has been a significant and serious suggestion.
Limiting use of experts
There is a suggestion that expert use should
be limited either in the choice of doctor or the level of their
qualification. This must start from the assumption that the level
of expert at present is inappropriate. Yet despite the insurers
under the pre action protocols having the opportunity to object
to the choice of doctor in each and every case they rarely do
so.
And experts, like costs, have to be proportionate
to be recoverable disbursements. To allow a system where the defendants
directly or indirectly determine who the claimant may have as
their expert can only undermine the fairness of the system and
harm the claimant.
Proportionality
It is true that in some cases there is a lack
of proportionality of costs to damages. But no one seems to be
looking beyond the superficial as to why that occurs.
The insurers repeatedly and publicly complain
about a lack of proportionality and yet they have a significant
weapon available to challenge any claim they consider to be unreasonable
through the costs assessment process. In Thompsons' experience
when they do so (in over 50% of the cases) they end up either
losing the assessments or conceding on a case by case basis that,
in fact, the costs are both reasonable and proportionate and reflect
their behaviour not the claimant's representatives. The conclusion
we draw from this is that it is precisely because their arguments
continually fail when put under the judicial microscope that the
insurers have opted to scream about proportionality from the political
and media rooftops.
Damages assessment
The typical claimant in a personal injury case
is ignorant of what their claim is worth. If there is a perception
of compensation culture, it is not held by potential claimants,
who tend not to even be aware of what they can claim for.
There is a proposal that there might be the
use of a computer system for damages assessment. This is frankly
absurd. A computer can no more replace a Judge in assessing damages
than it could replace a Judge sentencing offenders. Judicial assessment
of damages has developed over years of experience and practice.
It requires a degree of common sense and judgement that we all
reasonably expect of the Judiciary. It requires consideration
of competing and often apparently conflicting and partially reported
authorities of differing levels of courts. It is not a mathematical
exercise which can be done by pushing buttons.
If a computer system is the answer why have
insurers not done this long ago in a way which wins over claimant
confidence? They could have cut their own staff and made settlements
quicker and more easily as all would have confidence in the system.
There is a parallel in the notion of a computer
calculating damages to the tariffs which have been attempted and
led to unfairness in the CICA scheme. Even that tariff scheme
has not sought to introduce computerised assessment.
And at Thompsons, as claimant lawyers, we continuously
remind ourselves that damages themselves remain—according
to the Law Commission—massively out of step with what they
should be in real terms.
Encouragement of Before The Event (BTE) insurance
In its August 2005 paper Improved Access to
Justice: Funding Options and Proportionate Costs, the CJC suggested
actively encouraging BTE insurance.
Most people will have three or four domestic
insurance policies: for their car, their household contents, their
property and perhaps an annual travel policy. On each they may
have a bolt on BTE policy—attached without their agreement—for
which they will have paid an undisclosed sum.
BTE is considerably more expensive to the community
than union funding by After The Event (ATE) insurance, self insurance
or commercial insurance. And yet it is being heavily promoted
and bolted on by the insurers at every opportunity.
A union with 1 million members taking advantage
of the CCFA regime and having an average self insurance premium
of £340 supporting 10,000 successful cases in a given year
would have a total premium income—to pay for the cases that
are lost—of £3.4m.
By contrast if the average cost of a BTE premium
is, say, £20 per policy per year, one million people will
pay in the region of £60 million per year for before the
event insurance that the majority will never need (trade union
members certainly don't need it) or use (it is poorly promoted
when bolted on and has restrictions) and who most will not even
know they have (who reads the detail of their insurance policies?).
Even taking into account success fees, £60 million is a considerably
greater cost to society than ATE cover and self insurance.
If BTE is encouraged to dominate the market,
as the CJC suggests, ATE insurance will either wither or become
disproportionately expensive. ATE insurance will only survive
if it has a mixed basket of cases to support. It will not survive
if it is forced to back only the more difficult cases that BTE
lawyers reject.
Our experience is that BTE is, in fact, nothing
more than a claims company arrangement for insurers, a way of
capturing cases and profiting from them.
The cases are sold to panel law firms for a
referral fee. The law firms are then often required to run the
cases on an unlawful basis, ie no charge to the insurer if they
win or lose. That means the claimant is misled into thinking they
are insured when, in fact, the insurer's price of panel membership
is that the lawyer pays what the insurer should.
This arrangement is of great concern because
of the position it places the injury victim in. This system bypasses
the extensive consumer protection arrangements for CFAs set up
precisely because of the concern to preserve complete integrity
and impartiality of lawyers giving advice.
A lost case could mean a huge bill for a law
firm without any insurance protection as could rejecting an offer
and failing at court. The claimant is not told that his lawyers
are carrying this burden when they advise him about the case.
Lawyers running a case on BTE will be under
immense pressure to settle claims as quickly as possible and at
a lower sum than they might otherwise have fought for in the light
of the fact that they will:
— Have purchased the case from the
insurance company and therefore have a sum paid out they will
want to recover.
— Frequently be pursuing the same insurance
company on behalf of the claimant.
— Not be paid at all if they lose the
case.
SMALL CLAIMS
We finish on the issue of raising the small
claims limit as this is very much part of the debate about compensation
culture. It is one of the aims the insurance industry would, using
the smokescreen of the compensation culture, like to see pushed
through.
It is something that the committee has already
considered and we are conscious is not part of its brief for its
current enquiry. Nevertheless the limit in small claims is of
fundamental importance to claimants and the trade unions that
represent them, and there are points that we wish to raise.
It is a myth that the limit has not gone up.
Until 1999, the small claims limit of £1,000 were for general
damages only. By including special damages, the limit was effectively
increased by 25%.
£1,000 is not a "small" sum.
It is a lot of money to someone on the minimum wage, for whom
it represents over five weeks wages. Only 1/3 of people successful
in a claim through the small claims court ever actually receive
the awarded compensation.
Raising the limit will reduce the number of
claims. Many individuals such as the three we featured at the
start of this submission will not feel confident in making a claim
without legal representation.
How will a claimant know that their case will
attract £2,500 or more and so they should approach a lawyer?
It can be a considerable time after an accident before it becomes
clear that a claim is worth that much. There is no such problem
with £1,000 as this is clear early on in a claim.
And if a claimant doesn't know what the law
is relation to issues such as reasonable practicability and foreseeability,
they won't know what evidence to gather to back their claim. Insurers
regularly deny and misquote the law in order to escape liability.
That is why a claimant needs a lawyer.
Thompsons carried out a survey of a thousand
trade union members who had been represented by trade union legal
services in a claim completed over the last year, in order to
find out what value claimants put on being able to call upon advice
from their union's lawyers.
Of those surveyed, over 70% of the cases were
employment accidents, with the next most important case type being
road traffic accidents, both at work and elsewhere .
— Sixty four per cent of respondents
in the survey received awards of between £2000 and £5000.
— Sixty three per cent of respondents
would either not have proceeded with their case, or would not
have felt confident about going before a judge without legal representation.
— Only a third of respondents believed
their case would have been fairly dealt with if they hadn't had
a trade union lawyer.
— Ninety per cent of respondents said
they would trust specialist solicitors appointed by a trade union,
while less than 10% said they would trust claims companies or
high street solicitors.
— Nearly 85% of respondents rated the
service that they received from trade union solicitors to be either
good or very good.
CONCLUSION
The right to representation, to access to justice,
is fundamental to ensuring that everyone has an equal chance.
We believe, as the government does, that people unable to protect
themselves should be empowered. Removing the right to representation
in "small" claims, or any claim, creates an unequal
fight.
At Thompsons we believe there is such a thing
as society. If we cut individuals loose and leave them on their
own against a powerful adversary, they will be politically alienated,
angry and short changed.
If as a society we are trying to encourage better
employment relations, what message do we send to individuals who
have to take on their employer without representation? If they
feel short changed or belittled what will they feel about the
work that they do and the employer that they have?
Thompsons Solicitors
December 2005
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