The Workplace Relations Commission has launched a brand new website (www.workplacerelations.ie) which has been set up in order to merge the existing six Workplace Relations websites into one central Workplace Relations Database. This new website has replaced the interim website which was set up in 2012. The purpose of the new website is to bring together, in one single source, a comprehensive database on employment rights and obligations, good workplace relations, and on the services and resources available to employers and employees insofar as best practices and dispute resolution are concerned. As referenced above, the ultimate aim of this website is to merge the 6 existing websites currently in place, namely the previous websites for the EAT, LRC, Labour Court, the Equality Tribunal, NERA and the interim Workplace Relations site. While these 6 websites did provide good information and details on services delivered by the respective body, it did lead to a bit of a disconnect as it meant that an employee, employer or employment law practitioner may have to access up to 6 websites to gather the requisite information, whereas now all this information will be channeled through this one central database. Important Developments in Lodging Complaints and Searching for Determinations The new website will incorporate two important developments:
- The website will contain a single Workplace Relations Complaint Form which is may now be completed in an e-format. This will mean that the form can is reactive to the options you select and through a range of tick box options and text boxes one may submit a complaint electronically without needing to manually fill out the text on a paper document. Once completed, the e-form may be submitted electronically to the Department’s Workplace Relations Customer Services.
- The new website will contain a central Determinations Database which will provide a single, website-hosted and fully-searchable resource for users, practitioners and stakeholders for over 30,000 determinations/decisions issued to date by the Labour Court, Equality Tribunal and EAT. This will be a far more efficient system which will replace the three separate databases currently in use. This will be extremely beneficial because, for example, if you were to search for “gender discrimination” on the new website it will provide search results for all gender discrimination cases of the Labour Court and the Equality Tribunal whereas before one would have had to search those two databases separately.
Peninsula’s Submission on the New Website When the new website was under development the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation did seek out submissions and suggestions on the layout and format of the new website. Peninsula lodged its own submission in February of this year and we are very happy to see that a number of our proposals have been adopted on the new website, such as:
- The inclusion of the Claimant and Respondent names on published determinations to allow for cases to be more easily sourced and identified online.
- The inclusion of the following options when searching for determinations: Party Names, Date Range, Legislation Type, Dispute Resolution Body Type, Keyword Search and Case Number.
We are hopeful that some of our additional suggestions which have not yet been adopted will be adopted in future such as the inclusion of a “Related Decisions” option, the use of Meta Tags to aid searching and also a function to instantly download or print a determination. However, these suggestions would be difficult to implement and the progress to date has been fantastic. The new website represents a significant step forward for the Workplace Relations Commission, and we are very happy to see that a number of the key features highlighted in Peninsula’s submission were implemented. We will continue to await the implementation of the world-class industrial relations system and hopefully we will see some movement on this and the reform of JLCs/REAs in the very near future.
