M3-3.2 A day in the life of a conciliator: A closer look

In the first part, our speaker talked about the types of dispute she deals with. She said that she mainly Fill in the blank 1 of 18 workplace disputes between employers and employees.

Of course, an Fill in the blank 2 of 18 is the person who gives employment, gives work to someone, and an Fill in the blank 3 of 18 is the person who receives the work, the employment, or receives the work – the job. There are many words in legal English which end with either er or or and ee which signify a relationship between parties.

A tip is that the party with an er or or ending is the active party doing the verb, or performing the verb. So, an employer employs someone. A conciliator conciliates a process. A Fill in the blank 4 of 18 licenses a product. A Fill in the blank 5 of 18 is the person who leases a property, and so on.

Our speaker talked about dealing with cases of Fill in the blank 6 of 18 in the workplace. Discrimination is prohibited by the Equality Act 2010 in England and Wales, which aims to ensure that a person is not treated less favourably than another person due to particular characteristics, such as age, race, gender, sex and religion.

The speaker states that firstly, when a workplace dispute arises, employees should try to resolve cases by lodging a complaint with the company and following the company’s internal grievance procedures. This means the mechanism inside the company which deals with complaints and problems. Let’s listen to that first part again.

I handle a lot of workplace disputes between employer and employee, and in recent years I have seen an increase in conflicts related to harassment in the workplace. These cases often involve a female employee who wants to Fill in the blank 7 of 18 a claim against an employer or a colleague due to intimidating and offensive behaviour, which amounts to discrimination under the Equality Act of 2010. The first step is for the employee to try and resolve things with the employer or the colleague using the company’s own internal Fill in the blank 8 of 18 procedure. But if this fails, things can escalate and the employee may wish to sue the employer or the colleague.

In this next part, our speaker states that if the dispute cannot be resolved via the internal grievance procedure, then the next step is to try to resolve the dispute outside of court before Fill in the blank 9 of 18 a claim with the Employment Tribunal. The Employment Tribunal is a tribunal of first Fill in the blank 10 of 18 , which deals with employment disputes such as unfair dismissal, discrimination, and disputes regarding pay, and appeals go to the Employment Appeals Tribunal.

There are many ways to talk about suing someone. In this case, our speaker uses the collocation to lodge a claim. To lodge a claim, in this case, means to file a claim. However, the verb to lodge is most commonly used in the collocation to lodge a complaint. Pay attention to the prepositions used with this collocation.

For example, you can say, I am lodging a complaint to or with HR against my boss. Which means you will send the official complaint to HR, Human Resources, and the complaint is about your boss. You have a problem with your boss.

In England and Wales, we have a distinction between Fill in the blank 11 of 18 and tribunals. In most cases involving workplace disputes, such as discrimination or unfair dismissal, where a party has not been satisfied with the company’s internal grievance procedure, the injured party may then want to lodge a claim with the Employment Tribunal in order to litigate the dispute.

Before they do Fill in the blank 12 of 18 a claim, however, they must first contact an organisation called ACAS. The best way to do this is by submitting a form with the contact details of the parties to the dispute via this organisation’s website. ACAS stands for the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service. It is an independent and impartial public body, which provides a range of free and confidential services, such as conciliation, in order to help prevent and resolve workplace disputes.

When a party contacts ACAS, they are given the opportunity to participate in something called early conciliation. If the parties agree to this, then initially conciliation is explained to them by a conciliator, And then sessions take place in an attempt to reach a resolution. In conciliation and in the employment tribunal, parties can get legal advice from lawyers.

However, it’s not mandatory for parties to have a legal representative and they can Fill in the blank 13 of 18 themselves in this process. According to ACAS’s website, around 75 percent of cases which use the conciliation service are resolved. So, our speaker mentioned quite a few of these things that I’ve just talked about. Let’s listen to that second part again.

In most cases, before lodging a claim with the Employment Fill in the blank 14 of 18 it’s mandatory to contact the organisation I work for first. At this point, we offer the parties to the dispute the option to participate in early conciliation to try to settle the dispute without going to court. If the parties accept, they need to submit an early conciliation notification form to us, and then we explain the conciliation process to them.

Normally, we do this with a quick phone call which lasts about 10 minutes. Then, moving forward, we arrange sessions to talk with the parties separately. This can happen over the phone, face to face, or Skype. I try to help the parties understand each other, to speak to both sides, and to try to resolve the situation.

So, in the next part, our speaker talks about some of the difficulties of her job. She mentions that she is not a lawyer, and can’t Fill in the blank 15 of 18 legal advice. So conciliators don’t need to be qualified lawyers, but they are normally experts in a particular type of dispute. For example, in this particular case, workplace disputes.

She also mentions that if the parties are able to reach an agreement, it will be recorded and signed and will be legally binding. If, on the other hand, parties can’t Fill in the blank 16 of 18 a settlement, the case may be decided in a few different ways. It could be by a judge in an employment tribunal, by an arbitrator through arbitration, or even settled by the parties themselves in a private settlement. Let’s listen again to that last part.

Something that is difficult to deal with is that sometimes the parties try to get advice from me as to what I think would happen if they took the case to the Employment Tribunal. I’m not a lawyer, I don’t have all the answers, and it is not my job to give this advice. When this happens, I have to explain to the parties that we don’t Fill in the blank 17 of 18 about what might happen if they proceed with a claim, but rather my aim is to help the parties end the conflict and move on.

If we manage to reach an agreement, I record this agreement on a settlement form. The parties must sign it and then it becomes legally binding. Sometimes parties don’t want to go through conciliation. If this is the case, we Fill in the blank 18 of 18 an early conciliation certificate. And then it’s up to the parties to lodge a claim with the employment tribunal.