Industrial tribunal claims have soared in the last year, with more workers prepared to tackle their employers over issues ranging from salary to working hours.
Figures, published by the Employment Tribunal Service, reflect recent legal changes in areas such as the national minimum wage, holiday entitlement and age discrimination.

During 2007, there were a total of 132,577 employment tribunal claims - a leap of more than 15% from 2006.

The biggest increases came with equal pay claims, which, with 44,013 claims, rose by a massive 154.9%. Sex discrimination cases virtually doubled from 14,250 claims in 2006 to 28,153 over the last year. Total unfair dismissal claims also went up.

'Over the past year, FPB members have experienced increasing problems with tribunal claims and threats of employment tribunals,' said the FPB's senior member services representative, Philip Moody. 'Many business owners struggle to balance running their business with the correct implementation of employment rules and regulations.'

The report also showed that employees were successful in 32% of equal pay claims and 27% of race discrimination claims.

On 1 October, workers' holiday entitlement went up from 4 to 4.8 weeks, and on April 1 2009, this will be increased further to 5.6 weeks, or 28 days, for employees working a five-day week.

The Forum of Private Business (FPB) represents 25,000 UK-based businesses, which employs 600,000 people and wants small businesses to refer to its employment guide to avoid potential employment law pitfalls.

The new guide, which comes with contracts of employment helps negotiate a path through every step of an employee's time with the company, including recruitment, redundancy, maternity and paternity leave, equal opportunities and discipline and grievance procedures.

It also shows bosses how to reduce sick leave and how to identify frequent and disruptive sickness trends, as well as supplying business owners with useful standard clauses, such as those that prevent an employee working for another company, abuse of email, internet and data security, company vehicles, alcohol and substance abuse.

The employment guide is priced at £405 to non-members of the FPB and is available to members for only £175.