AI devours unfair dismissal

Why are wrongful dismissal claims soaring?…Everyone has a theory. A weakening job market. Artificial intelligence-assisted applications. Greater media attention on the cases leading to greater worker awareness of their rights. Did something break in people’s attitudes during the pandemic that contributed to the increase? Has working from home done something to curdle workplace relationships?

A key reason may have to do with the consultants and paid agents who have turned general protection and unfair dismissal claims into a business model.These paid agents are not lawyers or unions and are not subject to the same professional or ethical obligations. One paid agent told the commission his qualification was “the school of hard knocks”.

Many have figured out a way to automate unfair dismissal and general protection claims in a way that leverages payouts from employers with minimal cost.

This appears to be microeconomic in nature, but is it?

There is clearly some influence of AI in this. The pro forma nature of the appeals and a glance at the agent websites make this pretty clear.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.