Surge in employment rights cases

The recession has seen a surge in the number of employment rights cases being referred to the Labour Relations Commission (LRC).

Chief executive Kieran Mulvey said today the commission’s conciliation service was seeing “an explosion” in cases relating to pay restructuring and redundancy disputes.

Speaking after the publication of the LRC’s annual report for 2009, Mr Mulvey warned the commission’s caseload was likely to exceed 16,000 this year.

The commission's report showed the commission received 14,569 referrals last year, a 33 per cent increase on 2008 and the highest level of referrals to date.

Mr Mulvey said the service was simply “not equipped” to deal with this level of referral - where every complaint must be scheduled for investigation. “Most referrals are from individuals whose employment has ceased and where in some cases the employer concerned had ceased to trade or has closed their business,” he said.

Mr Mulvey called for some sort of “clearing house” arrangement between the employment rights dispute investigation bodies to be established in an effort to clear the backlog.

In its report, the commission said there 20 industrial disputes recorded in the economy during the first nine months of the year, involving 25,076 workers and resulting in a total of 81,530 working days lost.

The report noted that last year saw the highest level of industrial action since 2001, when a total of 114,613 working days were lost.

The industry sector accounted for almost 75 per cent of the total days lost in the first nine months of last year.

The most significant industrial action last year was a 24-hour national public service strike held on November 24th in protest Government cuts in public expenditure, the report noted.