This year, the PDA has secured more than half a million pounds through settlement agreements for pharmacists treated badly by their employers.
A settlement agreement is a way of resolving a dispute between an employer and an employee without having to go through an employment tribunal hearing. Instead, the two parties sign a legally binding agreement under which the employee agrees to settle their potential claims and in return the employer will agree to pay compensation. Sometimes the agreement will cover other matters too, such as an agreed employment reference for the employee.
Cases resolved this way by the PDA team resulted in payments for individual pharmacists ranging from under £10,000 to more than £125,000 during 2023. Cases can involve any pharmacy, from the largest multiple chains to single pharmacy operators, the NHS or other employers. Due to how settlement agreements work, this means the details of the claim are not placed in the public domain.
Securing these settlements often requires months of hard work by the PDA’s employment team, painstaking negotiations, and providing a level of pastoral support for the members, who in some cases have suffered physically and mentally due to their employment situation.
Mark Pitt, Director of Defence Services at the PDA said, “In these cases we have secured payment for our members before the case goes through an employment tribunal process and, as part of the confidentiality agreements, we are restricted from discussing the identity of the employer or the detail of how they mistreated the pharmacist. However, we know who these employers are and have seen the evidence of what occurred.
These agreements are a legitimate way to resolve an employment dispute, but due to confidentiality it does mean that other pharmacists may not be aware of the potential mistreatment they could face in their employment.
Though much of the PDA’s activity represents the interests of employed and locum pharmacists overall, this sort of support in resolving specific workplace disputes for individuals is only available to those who were PDA members before their issue arose. We therefore advise every pharmacist not to leave it too late and to join the PDA now, if they have not already done so.”
The above figure relates only to settlement agreements secured for employed pharmacists.
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