Some things have stayed the same though. Employers and employees are as vulnerable as ever to misunderstanding each other. I recall visiting claimants (‘applicants’ back then) and employers in their homes and workplaces and so often recognising that the issue, whatever it was, didn’t need to have got that far.
Hurt feelings and poor communication had a lot to answer for then, and they still do now. It was always satisfying to reach a c level executive list resolution on those individual cases, including one I recall where the employer pulled a sheaf of pre-printed dismissal letters from his filing cabinet with a flourish. I’d like to hope that the meeting was as memorable for him as it was for me.
Changes in collective disputes Misunderstanding still
How we conduct collective disputes has changed in that time. Pre-covid they were always face to face and in times past they often featured late sessions and a certain amount of tubthumping.
Now we take a blended approach, with some work done online. There are pros and be numbers cons to the new ways of working. Talks via Teams allow a better work-life balance, reduce the cost of travel (and late-night bacon butties at the conclusion of a protracted dispute).
They likely remove something too
Face to face allows a quicker build-up of trust and rapport, and it can be easier to ‘read the room’. And yet the core is the same, whatever the setting. A soap factory, a secure hospital, a pork pie manufacturer – these were all places where disputes bubbled up and I was called in. We always got it sorted in the end, and the process for this type of analysis is based on the pareto resolution is broadly the same now.
These days though the Acas conciliator will not emerge from the dispute with a large box of assorted soap to distribute amongst their colleagues, as I once did.
When I joined Acas in 1993, we were a much smaller organisation, and we have grown in parallel with the increase in individual employment rights. Collective disputes are fewer now, but as we all saw in the very recent past they can and do surge up. The public sector disputes of 2022 to 2023 were a strong reminder of that, and it was a professionally challenging time for me and a privilege to be influencing in those spaces.