‘Painting a Picture’ when ‘Putting in a Grievance’ Revelations and Reforms for Resolving Individual Grievances at the Town Hall
Pitchford, Nigel
Pitchford, Nigel
Publication Date
End of Embargo
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The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
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Accepted for publication
Institution
University of Bradford
Department
School of Law
Awarded
2022
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Abstract
This thesis is premised on a straightforward notion: personal labour for an employer is work, regardless of the individual’s contractual status, and the right to raise a grievance within the daily workplace is fundamental to such a relationship. Whilst English local authorities are avowedly committed to ‘building inclusive communities’, as a recent policy paper termed it, status differences revealed from within their own workforces have the potential to constrain this right. At a broader level, the expansion of the so-called ‘gig economy’ has forced the judiciary, through decisions involving major digital brands such as Deliveroo and Uber, as well as the Government itself, to consider the status implications, and the associated rights of directly employed workers and agency workers. These so-called ‘gig workers’, together with employees on casual contracts of employment, comprise today’s ‘legally vulnerable’ for the purpose of this thesis. For this marginalised cohort, reforms are posited.
Preliminary findings from a review of the Employment Appeal Tribunal’s jurisprudence for this thesis confirmed, rather surprisingly, given the size and extent of the overall workforce, that grievance procedures are seldom raised in argument within the few local authority (‘town hall’) cases that reach it, and even if they are so raised little critical or meaningful judicial discussion ever takes place on them. Such a paucity of published decision-making has contributed to an overall deficit of knowledge on how procedures come to be as they are, how they are used to resolve differences, and how managers respond to grievance expression, especially from the more legally vulnerable constituency of each workforce. This thesis therefore, addresses two overarching questions: (i) how have the legal frameworks on workplace grievances and contractual status evolved?; and (ii) how do local authorities, through their procedural structures and operational practice, facilitate the resolution and inclusion of individual grievances?
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Type
Thesis
Qualification name
PhD