A call for help

In a dramatic break from recent tradition is seems there is a phone-in service that is actually offering us value for money. The publicly funded meditation group ACAS is proudly heralding that it's helpline stopped 16,000 employment tribunals in the last year, and in doing so saved business £120m. Well done them, I say. 

Unfortunately, pretty much everyone else is conspiring to undermine this. The Great British worker is happier than ever to run off to tribunal to make a quick buck or two. In the last year the number of employment tribunal cases went up 15% on 2005, to around 133,000. And this is in the good times - just wait until the economy contracts and people lose jobs, then they'll get really enthusiastic about making a dash for the cash.

To help stem this tide the government has wisely decided to cut back on ACAS' budget - it lost one in six staff last year. If you want an analogy, might I recommend you rent 300, the film about the doomed little group Spartans who stood against overwhelming odds and promptly got massacred.

At least ACAS has its own Leonidas to make a fight of it. It has just taken on Ed Sweeney, previously a union general secretary, as 'independent' chair. The previous incumbent didn't get to call herself independent, so one can only presume Sweeney is getting ready to take it to the government in a way she never did.