Company Disciplinary Cases against Trade Union Representatives by London Underground
Request ID: FOI-3412-1819
Date published: 11 April 2019
You asked
Could please provide a list of all Company Disciplinary Interview cases by London Underground against trade union representatives in the last 5 years.
a) Could you break these down into cases where the charge or charges had elements of union related activity and those that did not.
b) Can you further break these down into whether the employee was dismissed, summarily dismissed, given a suspended dismissal, given a 52 week warning or any other sanction or no sanction.
c) Can you further break these down into what the result was at appeal.
d) Finally can you list how many of these cases went to employment tribunal.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-3412-1819
Thank you for your request received on 13 March 2019 asking for information about company disciplinary cases against trade union (TU) representatives by London Underground.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and TfL’s information access policy
Unfortunately, to provide the information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with a request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.
We have estimated that it would cost over £4000 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 160 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.
We do not record the information you have requested centrally. In order to collate the requested information we would have to look at all disciplinary cases over the last five years, there have been over 1200 in this period, to determine how many of these went to a Company Disciplinary Interview. Once these had been identified we would then need to review the case records further to determine if there was any union related activity, what the outcome of the interview was, and whether this went onto an Employment Tribunal as again this information is not centrally recorded.
To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. If you want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information held by Transport for London. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, geographical area or specific departments of TfL.
Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does not have to answer your question if it would require the creation of new information or the provision of a judgement, explanation, advice or opinion that was not already recorded at the time of your request.
In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please feel free to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob
Senior FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
[email protected]
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