Without Prejudice - a 25-minute drama produced by the Federation of European Employers (FedEE), The TUC and ACAS illustrates how, even with the best intentions, miscommunications and insensitive remarks can lead to adversarial situations with the potential to ruin the lives of staff and their employers.
This drama is aimed at employers, staff, high school graduates, university students, job seekers and the wider British public while the story centers around a claim for a race discrimination case followed by the proceedings before an employment tribunal in England and Wales.
The fictional drama explores the way that widely differing perspectives can arise between participants in work situations and how the law determines whether certain types of conduct amount to race discrimination. The purpose of the film is not to show how employers or employees can "win" a tribunal case or to explain tribunal procedures. Taking no sides, Without Prejudice seeks instead to tell the human story and recreate, as realistically as possible, the experiences of those involved.
Robin Chater, secretary general of the Federation of European Employers (FedEE), said: "We just have to look at the increasingly high number of accepted claims to employment tribunals in this country to realise there is a major problem affecting Britons in the workplace. There are seldom overall winners in what amounts to bitter, costly and time consuming disputes.
"It therefore long overdue that a film has been created which demonstrates how easily these situations happen, yet how employees or management can be more sensitive and conscious in avoiding them."
