At stake in the preliminary hearing on 26 September 2024 in the East London Employment Tribunal was whether this first claim against QMUL’s 2023 punitive deductions had timed out on three different grounds of challenge: blacklisting (reg 9), detriment for trade union activities (s.146 TULRCA 1992), and failure to pay branch officials for trade union duties (s.169 TULRCA 1992).

Employers often weaponise time, using the technicalities of time limits to speed things up and avoid scrutiny of the substance of the complaint. Employees on the other hand often need more time to process the harm that is the subject of the complaint. If the judge had sided with the employer to time out any part of QMUCU member Zara Dinnen’s three-pronged legal claim, the tribunal might not get to hear about the full period of economic violence experienced by this deductee. For deductees, the first step in this legal struggle was to get as much of the actual experience of deductions as possible through the tribunal door.   

Over 50 days of 100% wage deductions were taken from this university worker despite turning up to work as usual over a four month period between July and October because they had engaged in lawful industrial action during the Marking and Assessment Boycott. Challenging this employer practice on legal terrain has become important for the wider trade union movement as well as for the individual deductees. If employers can lawfully subject trade union members to this kind of economic punishment for engaging in action short of a strike, they are going to hollow out trade union members’ Article 11 rights to assemble and take action in seeking better pay and working conditions for all. Minimising the possibility of fragmenting abstractions, by bringing as much of the actual experience of deductions into the courtroom as possible, is important in the legal struggle to have the injustice of disproportionate deductions recognised. If deductees were going to be able to hold law to account, they needed their lawyers to win the argument on timeliness. And Dinnen’s lawyer did.   

Judge Howden-Evans decided that the whole series of ASOS deductions, taken from Zara Dinnen over July to October 2023, is legally relevant and in time for the purpose of bringing a substantive claim on blacklisting and on detriment. The four rounds of deductions will be considered at a future full hearing into whether they involve prohibited Reg 9 blacklisting and/or a prohibited detriment for trade union activities under s 146 of TULRCA.  

The judge also decided that the fourth round of deductions in October was in time for the purposes of making a third substantive claim, namely that such deductions are a failure to pay for trade union duties and therefore a breach of s 169 TULRCA. But the first three rounds of deductions in July to September were out of time, because the rules of statutory interpretation meant that it was not possible to count backwards from the October failure given the terms of s. 171 on time limits.  

These three legal issues resonate with a second application submitted to the Employment Tribunal, by James Eastwood. On the 10th of October, the tribunal will hold a preliminary hearing into joining the two claims. That hearing will probably also address whether the full hearing of the three substantive claims should be stayed until after Ryanair v Morais [pdf], a case concerning blacklisting, is heard in December 2024 and decided by the Court of Appeal.   

It is also worth noting that the parties agreed that the Employment Tribunal had no jurisdiction to hear 1) a breach of contract claim from someone remaining in the employment of the university or 2) a free-standing breach of human rights claim, but that actions on those legal issues could still be taken in other courts. If other deductees are bringing claims to the ET and want to preserve their right to bring a claim on the contractual aspects of deductions, they can ask the tribunal judge not to rule on any contractual points and to preserve their right to seek justice on that claim in another court.  

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3 thoughts on “QMUCU wins on timeliness in the Employment Tribunal! ”

  1. Pingback: ASOS Deductions are going to the Employment Tribunal
  2. Pingback: Support the right to be free of detriment for industrial action! 
  3. Pingback: Join in collective work against disproportionate deductions

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