Sheikh rails against "no win-no fee"
Leicestershire businessman Shahid Sheikh has said the rise of the "no win-no fee" culture in the UK has led to a breakdown of communication between management and staff which is "stifling enterprise". Speaking at an Insider round table event, Sheikh said: "Companies are now sometimes scared to take on new staff. In some cases a tribunal team is acting as a government-sponsored sales barrier for companies."
Sheikh, managing director of Leicester-based Clifton Packaging Company, said he was aware of local gangs contacting workers to tell them to take their employees to a tribunal. "These people are indoctrinating the weak," he said.
Turning his ire towards the legal system, Sheikh said that the law has failed to prevent these "gangs" being identified. He said that his own firm has tried to introduce what he called "systems" to ensure that staff were happy at work.
He added: "We’re a family company in the way we treat our employees. We’ve afforded them luxuries, but these luxuries might have to be reduced if we’re faced with a tribunal case. It tends to be lower-paid people who are targeted to take their case to a tribunal because they are seen as weak.
"There have been times when I’ve been very thankful for the systems I’ve put in place at Clifton have been there. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to prove that claims brought against the company were false. However, because of these claims, we have to reign in what flexibility we can allow our staff, which of course affects them."
Figures from the annual report from the Senior President of Tribunals Lord Justice Carnwath revealed that a record 236,100 claims were lodged over the period, which was a 56 per cent rise from 12 months earlier.
The claims lodged covered 392,800 jurisdictions or complaints (for example, where a claim is made for both unfair dismissal and sex discrimination at the same time). This is an average of 1.7 jurisdictions per claim. Of these, just under a quarter were Working Time Regulations claims – largely multiple airline industry cases that have to be resubmitted every three months.
