Alex Locke, editor of the ELA Brief refers to the rolling out of judicial mediation to all Employment Tribunals in the latest ELA Briefing magazine.
Apparently certain cases wil be identified as suitable for mediation.
These are discrimination cases, ones that listed for over 3 days in Tribunal and ones where the person is still employed by the organisation.
All well and good.
Some observations.
1 As Alex points out, hardly anyone knows about the rolling out of judicial mediation. I found out yesterday when some eagle-eyed lawyer pointed it out to me. It is tough to get people to mediate as it is without having Tribunals hardly pushing it all.
2 Beyond these criteria, what are other criteria are being applied to determine if the case is suitable for mediation. Is it going to be compulsory for the cases identified by Tribunal Chairmen? What happens if a lawyer objects to mediation?
3 Why limit it to discrimination and when the employee is still working for the organisation? Mediation works in other scenarios as well.
Frankly this is too timid and it remains to be seen how lawyers will react to this.