Usually the forum for humdrum disputes over hourly rates and unpaid overtime – employment tribunals are not the first place you’d look for an eye-catching yarn.

But for dedicated followers of the tribunal service’s list, recent weeks have been a purple patch of zingers, with judges settling the kinds of rows that belong more in a soap opera than in civil proceedings.

Cases have included arguments over whether being called messy is harassment, calling your boss a “dickhead” is a sackable offence – another considered if young chatty workers disturbing older colleagues breaches equality rules.

Employees who soldier on without complaint might be surprised to see such issues litigated, the fact that they are, according to experts, is down to an unusual confluence of factors.

Andrea London, employment partner at Winckworth Sherwood, said some of the headlines are down to selective reporting of much wider claims – but another reason for wide-ranging allegations may be that people are choosing to represent themselves in disputes.

While a lawyer would advise on what to include in a claim, a litigant in person (representing themselves) would be likely to cover everything they thought might be relevant.

“These are the quirky sort of bits that people might be interested in reading about, rather than [the substance of] an entire claim,” London said.

“There are a lot of very serious claims going through but what we tend to find, particularly with claimants in person, is that they will include absolutely everything in a potential claim, from somebody looking at them the wrong way to being spoken to harshly. So tribunal judges then have to go through all of the issues.”

The respective claimants (both unsuccessful) in the messiness accusation case and that alleging age harassment against an older colleague by younger boisterous workers, represented themselves, an increasing occurrence since legal aid for most employment tribunals was abolished in 2013.

London said: “Some people might consider it to be too easy now [to get a case before a tribunal] but that’s for the Ministry of Justice [to decide].”

She said that cases did get sifted out before reaching trial but they tended to be the “completely outlandish” ones or those that were out of time and that throwing out more claims at an early stage would restrict access to justice.

London also stressed that there was more to some of the recent eye-catching tribunal cases than was perhaps obvious at first glance. Commenting on news reports of a woman who was compared with Darth Vader being awarded £30,000, she said the case involved a number of different claims, not just that which related to the Star Wars villain. The former employee was ultimately successful because she suffered detriment as a result of protected disclosures she made which fell within whistleblowing legislation.

In another headline-grabbing case, reported this week, a judge said that a boss would not be breaking employment law, for example, if they rejected a job application from an avid Tottenham Hotspur supporter because the office was full of Arsenal fans.

London said: “The team you support is not a protected characteristic (which it would be unlawful to discriminate against) so, provided they’re sensible about it, employers are allowed to choose a candidate that they think would be the best fit among the other members of staff. Particularly if it’s a small company, having somebody that’s going to get on with everybody is potentially very important.”

While the judge in the “dickhead” case ruled that the insult was not a sackable offence, it does not mean employees have free rein to insult their bosses.

“The tribunals do try to be consistent with other cases that come through at that level but generally precedents are set at the EAT (employment appeal tribunal) and court of appeal,” said London. “Employment tribunals are fact dependent so it’s quite tricky for judges.”

John Bowers KC, an experienced employment law barrister and the principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, said: “There are unusual facts in some employment tribunals but all of the cases are carefully considered and the facts weighed. Frivolous cases are rooted out at a preliminary stage although this could be done more rigorously.”

But he said the more serious issue was delays in the system. “At present the tribunals are deluged with work and cases are taking years to be heard,” he said. “This will be made more serious if day one rights (new protections for employees as soon as they start a job) are introduced. More money needs to be made available to the tribunal system.”

A third of UK employers are using “bossware” technology to track workers’ activity with the most common methods including monitoring emails and web browsing.

Private companies are most likely to deploy in-work surveillance and one in seven employers are recording or reviewing screen activity, according to a UK-wide survey that estimates the extent of office snooping.

The findings, shared with the Guardian by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), are based on responses from hundreds of UK managers and suggest there has been a recent growth in computerised work surveillance.

In 2023, less than a fifth of people thought they were being monitored by an employer, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found. The finding that about a third of managers report their organisations are monitoring workers’ online activities on employer-owned devices is probably an underestimate, as roughly the same proportion said they don’t know what tracking their organisations do.

Many monitoring systems are aimed at preventing insider threats and safeguarding sensitive information as well as detecting productivity dips. But the trend appears to be causing unease. A large minority of managers are opposed to the practice, saying it undermines trust with staff and invades their personal privacy, the CMI found.

One manager at an insurance company, which is developing AI systems to monitor staff screen activity to track performance, said it was “unsettling”.

“Do they not trust their employees to do their jobs and are they looking to replace them with AI?” they said.

One provider of employee monitoring offers to report on workers’ “idle time”, “employee productivity tracking” and use of unapproved AI or social media as well as “real-time insights into employee behaviour, including screenshots, screen recordings, keystrokes, and app usage”.

In response to the findings, the ICO said bosses “must make their employees aware of the nature, extent and reasons for monitoring”, and said excessive monitoring “can undermine people’s privacy especially if they are working from home”. It warned it will “take action if necessary”.

Last year, the ICO stopped the outsourcing company Serco from using facial recognition technology and fingerprint scanning to monitor the attendance of staff at a chain of leisure centres.

Monitoring often amounts to checks that inappropriate content is not being accessed, the CMI said. But it warned, “there’s a longer-term impact if you are feeling this is big brother-like and you are being watched”.

“If it is being used, it is incredibly important employers are open, otherwise that’s going to cause significant problems in terms of data privacy and protection,” said Petra Wilton, CMI director of policy and external affairs.

Other recent examples of surveillance technology at work include plans by HSBC to install a large numbers of security cameras – 1,754 by one estimate – and biometric readers which use handprints as one way to access areas in its new London headquarters.

The accountancy firm PwC recently introduced a “traffic light” system using data from pass swipes and wifi connections to check staff are meeting a mandate to attend the office at least three days a week. A spokesperson for PwC said this was “accepted by the vast majority of our people”.

A former senior worker at a public transport authority, who asked not to be named, called the monitoring they faced, including of their online diary, “intrusive and downright harassment”.

“It started with surveillance and it ended with me leaving because I was so infuriated,” they said. One in six managers also told the CMI researchers they would consider looking for a new job if their organisation started monitoring employees’ online activities on work devices.

Among managers who knew their organisations carried out surveillance, 35% were monitoring emails. Overall, tracking log in and log off times and system access were the most popular form of surveillance.

The study found that 53% of managers supported monitoring of employees’ online activities on employer-owned devices, but 42% opposed it, mostly because it undermines trust but also because they believe it does not improve performance and can be misused or lead to unfair judgments or disciplinary actions.

Reuters
 — 

The owner of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety sued Google on Friday, alleging the technology giant’s AI summaries use its journalism without consent and reduce traffic to its websites.

The lawsuit by Penske Media in federal court in Washington, DC, marks the first time a major US publisher has taken Alphabet-owned Google to court over the AI-generated summaries that now appear on top of its search results.

News organizations have for months said the new features, including Google’s “AI Overviews,” siphon traffic away from their sites, eroding advertising and subscription revenue.

Penske, a family-owned media conglomerate led by Jay Penske and whose content attracts 120 million online visitors a month, said Google only includes publishers’ websites in its search results if it can also use their articles in AI summaries.

Without the leverage, Google would have to pay publishers for the right to republish their work or use it to train its AI systems, the company said in the lawsuit. It added Google was able to impose such terms due to its search dominance, pointing to a federal court’s finding last year that the tech giant held a near 90% share of the US search market.

“We have a responsibility to proactively fight for the future of digital media and preserve its integrity – all of which is threatened by Google’s current actions,” Penske said.

It alleged that about 20% of Google searches that link to its sites now show AI Overviews, a share it expects to rise, and added that its affiliate revenue has fallen by more than a third from its peak by the end of 2024 as search traffic declined.

Online education company Chegg also sued Google in February, alleging that the search giant’s AI-generated overviews were eroding demand for original content and undermining publishers’ ability to compete.

Responding to Penske’s lawsuit, Google said on Saturday that AI overviews offer a better experience to users and send traffic to a wider variety of websites.

“With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. We will defend against these meritless claims.” Google Spokesperson Jose Castaneda said.

A judge handed the company a rare antitrust win earlier this month by ruling that it will not have to sell its Chrome browser as part of efforts to open up competition in search.

The move disappointed some publishers and industry bodies, including the News/Media Alliance which has said the decision left publishers without the ability to opt out of AI overviews.

“All of the elements being negotiated with every other AI company doesn’t apply to Google because they have the market power to not engage in those healthy practices,” Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group representing more than 2,200 US-based publishers, told Reuters on Friday.

“When you have the massive scale and market power that Google has, you are not obligated to abide by the same norms. That is the problem.”

Coffey was referring to AI licensing deals firms such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI have been signing with the likes of News Corp, Financial Times and The Atlantic. Google, whose Gemini chatbot competes with ChatGPT, has been slower to sign such deals.