The employment relations service, Acas, recently released its annual report, which gives a description of the UK employment scenario. The figures in the report show that there has been an increase in wrongful termination conciliation cases, calls for advice on dismissal and other conciliation cases from the Employment Tribunal Service due to rising stress in workplaces, which has been attributed to the recession.

The increase in wrongful termination conciliation cases has been a little less than one-fourth in the last year. The absolute increase has been 12,000, with total 55,000 conciliation cases being handled by Acas this year. These cases had been reducing in the previous two years and this increase shows the impact of recession with many firms needing redundancy advice or support on redundancy law turning to professional organisations such as Workplace Law for expert training and consulting on redundancy for employers.

Other cases, which Acas gets from the Employment Tribunal Service, increased to 78,000. The increase from last year in such cases has been around 20%.

The number of calls for advice on dismissals to the helpline maintained by Acas increased by almost 100 per cent as well. The number of such calls in the last year had been around 10,000 to 15,000 a week. Due to this, the helpline had to increase its timings in April and it started providing services on evenings and Saturday mornings too.

These statistics, according to the Acas Chair, Ed Sweeney, depict the pressure faced by both workers and their managers due to the recession.

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