There has been interest in the news lately with respect to a number of employment tribunal decisions handed down that don’t go the way of the claimant. Having had dealings with that side of legal life, it was very much thought of as the little man’s chance to take their case to the higher authority and get justice. In those days you only needed one year’s service to be allowed to enter a claim for unfair dismissal so there were many more claims per year. Things changed a lot during the pandemic a few short years ago. That in itself changed the very fabric of our working society and altered some modus operandi for ever.
Whenever I think of my days working in a particular post, I recollect everything about it, from the very beginning of the day through to the somewhat tiring end of. I, and millions and millions of fellow office staff would drive to their nearest station, get on the commuter train up to the City; we’d poir off the train and immediately leg it to the underground station and fight their way down hundreds of stairs or onto a crowded escalator and wait, cheek by jowl for the next tube train to come screaming to a halt at the platform. Then after folk squeezed off and another coachload squeezed into their places, it would go racing on again. Folk who work in ordinary towns and smaller cities have no idea of the effort one goes to to reach a London office! But that changed in the lockdown; those norms, bult up over decades suddenly crashed to an immediate halt as staff were told to remain at home and gradually it became normal to work from home with current software allowing access to their office life – without the travel.
