It is always helpful to be informed of the law relating to your position before you go into any form of meeting, even more so perhaps with disciplinary meetings.

You can only claim unfair dismissal (including constructive) if you have been employed for 12 months or more, otherwise it is wrongful dismissal.

An employer can make an employee redundant for economic, technical or operational reasons. An employee is entitled to statutory redundancy pay if they have been employed for 2 years or more.

Discrimination takes many forms, i.e. sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, etc. and can be a technical area of law and includes victimisation and harassment.

Under the Working Time Regulations you are entitled to a certain number of days holiday and breaks between hours of work.

TUPE protects employees that have been transferred from one employer to another and means that you should transfer over on your existing terms and conditions and length of service.

Compromise Agreements are far more usual now and basically mean that you are entering into a contract to give up your rights to bring clams against your employer. It is a requirement that you get independent legal advice before signing one.