Clients who give up without resolution of their employment problems

Respondents who indicated that client problems were always, usually or sometimes monitored (in practice 91 per cent of Law Centres and 93 per cent of CABx) were asked to estimate the proportion of clients who give up without any resolution. More CAB than Law Centre advisers felt their clients ‘gave up’ pursing their problem. The large majority of Law Centres – 89 per cent – estimated the proportion was a quarter or less and 4 per cent suggested it was above a half. Among CABx respondents, only 64 per cent estimated the ‘give up’ rate was a quarter or less; 30 per cent suggested it was around half; and six per cent proposed it exceeded half (Table 54).

Table 54: Estimated proportion of clients who give up without any resolution

CAB (%) Law Centre (%) Total (%) Quarter or less 64.0 89.3 73.1 Around half 30.0 7.1 21.8 Over half 6.0 3.6 5.1

Total (%) 100.0 100.0 100.0

N=78

The lower rate of clients ‘giving up’ reported by Law Centre advisors is likely to be associated with their greater likelihood to pursue problems to tribunal application (it will be recalled that 34 per cent of Law Centre advisors took half or more cases on to tribunal, compared with 14 per cent of CAB advisers). The greater amount of casework among Law Centre advisers is arguably a

crucial element in higher rates of resolution of problems.

However, as one adviser indicated, a CAB could not know whether the advice given had satisfied the client, unless they returned:

“It’s quite a lot and I am probably thinking there of the ones who don’t get to the Tribunal stage. So I think those would be the ones who come in at a generalist advice level and they don’t necessarily come back and tell us what they’ve decided to do. If they come back to an appointment and they just decide they can’t go through it all, because they don’t think they will get anywhere.”

(CAB Adviser, North) Supporting the point made above about the importance of casework to better resolution, a number of CAB interviewees argued that drop out was low once clients had made a Tribunal application. One explained this in relation to his policy of dissuading clients from progressing if he thought their case weak. Another argued it was the bureau’s policy to ensure clients were fully versed from the outset of the time they would have to give to preparation of their case and the trauma Tribunal proceedings could involve. In which case, perhaps only the most determined would proceed:

“I don’t get many who pull out. That’s probably because if a client’s case is weak, the scales are difficult, but less than 40 per cent chance, I try to advise that client not to proceed. Or what I usually do in those cases is say ‘look, get a second opinion, go to a solicitor, present your case to him or her, if that solicitor thinks there is a chance, then come back to me and tell me what the solicitor said and I’ll represent you on those terms for nothing’. So they’ve got only the initial or perhaps a couple of trips to a solicitor. Not many come back, actually, so I am probably a bit more generous in representing clients and offering to represent clients than I think I am.”

“Generally they don’t (drop out) because we take the view that if a

client is going to an Employment Tribunal they really have to understand at the beginning what an undertaking it is because it does require a lot from them and particularly as we don’t offer representation at the Tribunal. They have to know, I think, right at the beginning what they are letting themselves in for and there’s no point getting all through the process and then them saying actually they’re too scared to go to an Employment Tribunal. They can’t do that because we just don’t have the resources to have done all that work for then nothing to happen. So I would say that if we’re saying we’re filling up the ET1 we do go through with the client very clearly about what the process is and what is going to happen because it is stressful going to an Employment Tribunal and the process before hand is quite stressful, even more so if you get a letter threatening costs from the other side but also the getting of the witness and the going and particularly if you are defending yourself.”

(CAB Adviser, South East)

This interviewee’s point that lack of legal representation at Tribunal could deter clients from proceeding was echoed by many other CABx and Law Centre employment advisers and we return to it later, and also to the point that Tribunal applicants may be exposed to the ‘other side’s’ threat to impose costs.

There were both Law Centre and CABx interviewees who argued that clients sometimes gave up because the legal process was so complex and slow:

“All of our cases, the ones that get in front of a Tribunal are probably

less than half of the cases that we take on. Most of it is negotiated, or would even get to the situation where the client themselves has got so fed up with the prolonged process of some of the employers that they just walk away from it”.

“[Why do people give up?] A number of reasons – I mean frustration

with the process is the thing I see most clearly, it’s slow and cumbersome.”

(Law Centre Adviser, London) Asked about type of workers who were most likely to give up without resolution of their problem, a number of interviewees proposed it was migrant workers and agency workers and one interviewee included young workers.

“A lot of them have come over here – you sign this piece of paper, you

will come to England, your £5000 trip from Poland will be paid for by your gangmaster and you will pay him back at £10 a week until it’s paid, which will be the rest of your life! So they are frightened that if they go and make a complaint, they will be thrown out of the country, they will have this huge debt and there will be physical reprisals against them as well, because these people are not nice people, they are a gangmaster element.”

(CAB Adviser, East Anglia) “I mean frustration with the process is the thing I see most clearly, it’s

slow and cumbersome. It’s very difficult and also we can’t sometimes (put in the input) because of the amount of money they are claiming is relatively small, although it’s important to the migrant, if you look at the costs that we incur, it’s only possible for us to do a small amount of work before the public purse takes the view that it’s inappropriate to spend this amount of time on it, because the public purse only judges the value of a claim by money. It doesn’t judge it by trying to deal with a particular rogue employer or anything like that, or even that £1000 for someone who is on the breadline is an enormous difference …Also, migrants are mobile and so some of them just do go off home.”

(Law Centre Adviser, London) In respect to agency workers, one CABx adviser (North) argued that ‘some of