The Workplace Relations Commission recently published their six month progress report and it makes for interesting reading.
The report details the establishment of the Workplace Relations Commission and then provides statistics on the type of calls that the Information and Customer Service Unit receive, which is a good insight for employers and practitioners alike. The vast majority of the calls (approximately 31%) were queries on employment permits, followed by 17% of phonecalls being queries on working hours. Interestingly enough, only 5% of phonecall queries were about unfair dismissal claims. In terms of the type of callers who contacted the Information and Customer Service Act, 71% of the callers were employees and 21% were employers, the remainder of callers being employer/employee representatives and citizen information centres.
The report notes that as regards “legacy cases”, that is cases that were pending before the Rights Commissioner and Equality Tribunal, the number of cases that are still awaiting a hearing date has been reduced by half in the six months since the commencement of the Workplace Relations Act 2015, which is good news for employees who may be anxiously waiting a hearing date for their complaint. The report also notes that the current waiting time for a Rights Commissioner hearing is 8 -12 weeks while Equality Tribunal hearings have a waiting time of 53 weeks.
We await the annual WRC progress report to see what progress is made by then!
To read more on the report:-