Employment Library

  • Social Media - Is Your Business Protected?

    Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of social media and the growth seems set to continue. Although social media can present exciting opportunities for businesses, the popularity of social media and specifically social networking sites can present...

  • Radical Family Friendly Changes Proposed

    A recent government review “ Consultation on Modern Workplaces ” has made some radical proposals regarding family friendly legislation. Theresa May, Home Secretary and Minister for Women commented: “Britain’s workplace laws are in...

  • The Bribery Act 2010 - The Death of Corporate Hospitality?

    A survey by KPMG in 2011 found that 71% of companies believe that there are some places in the world where business cannot be done without engaging in bribery and corruption. The Bribery Act came into force on 1 st July 2011 and was designed to overhaul...

  • If you use Temp workers are you ready for October?

    If you use Temporary Workers, you will need to prepare for the Agency Workers Regulations which come into force from 1st October 2011. The Regulations are based around equalisation of pay and rights between agency workers and permanent workers. Some of the...

  • The Equality Act 2010 - Health Questionnaires

    The use of questionnaires about job applicants' general health and similar issues before a job offer is made - including before selecting a pool of applicants from whom the successful candidate will be chosen - is prohibited under Section 60 of the ...

  • TUPE - Post Transfer Consultation

    The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has considered ( AMICUS and TGWU v Glasgow City Council ) whether the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) require a transferee employer to consult with the union representatives...

  • Unfair Dismissal - Reasonable Responses

    In Sarkar v West London Mental Health NHS Trust , the Court of Appeal has ruled that the Employment Tribunal (ET) was entitled to find that the decision to dismiss Dr Sameer Sarkar from his post as a Consultant Psychiatrist at Broadmoor Hospital was...

  • Unsuccessful Job Applicants - Access to Recruitment Information

    In Meister v Speech Design Carrier Systems GmbH , the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was asked by the German Labour Court to give a preliminary ruling on whether an unsuccessful job applicant who can show that he or she meets the requirements for a post...

  • Unfair Dismissal - Polkey Reductions - Some Speculation Inevitable

    In Eversheds Legal Services Ltd. v de Belin , whilst upholding Mr de Belin’s claims of unfair dismissal and sex discrimination, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that the Employment Tribunal (ET) had failed to address Eversheds’...

  • Triangular Agency Working Arrangements - The Correct Approach

    A further case ( East Living Ltd. v Sridhar and TSG Services Ltd. ) has confirmed the approach an Employment Tribunal (ET) should take when deciding whether or not an agency worker is in reality the employee of the end user company. Mr Sridhar was...

  • Employment Law - What to expect in 2011?

    There are a number of proposed changes to Employment Law due this year. We deal briefly below with some of the more important changes and possible developments. Legal advice should always be obtained in specific cases. Default Retirement Age The...

  • Equality Act 2010-Should Employers be Concerned?

    There has been a considerable amount of media coverage on the impact of the Equality Act 2010 in recent weeks, but what are the implications for employers? From 1st October the Equality Act 2010 came into force with the intention of pulling together all of...

  • Age Discrimination - Mandatory Retirement

    Whilst enforced retirement at age 65 has now been abolished and the Equality Act 2010 has replaced the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 , the decision of the Supreme Court in a case brought under the Regulations ( Seldon v Clarkson, Wright...

  • Age Discrimination - Life After the Abolition of the Default Retirement Age

    The Default Retirement Age (DRA) has now been abolished and it is no longer permissible for an employer to dismiss an older worker on the ground of retirement unless this can be objectively justified under the Equality Act 2010 . This does not mean that...

  • Rest Breaks - Appropriate Alternative Arrangements

    Under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR), workers are entitled to an uninterrupted 20-minute rest break if their daily working time exceeds six hours. However, there are exceptions to this general rule to take account of unusual or particular working...

  • Resolving Workplace Disputes

    As of 6 April 2009, the Employment Act 2008 repealed the Statutory Dispute Resolution Procedures in their entirety. In their place is a voluntary Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) Code of Practice , which sets out the basic principles...

  • Unfair Dismissal Claims - A Minute Late is Too Late

    An employee must bring an unfair dismissal claim within three months of his or her effective date of termination and the time limits for presenting claims to the Tribunals Service are normally strictly enforced. If the deadline is missed, the Employment...

  • Varying Employees' Contracts of Employment

    With economic prospects still looking gloomy, many employers are seeking ways to reduce staff costs and an alternative to making redundancies is to reorganise employees’ patterns of working. It is important to remember, however, that where this would...

  • Whistleblowers - The Scope of the Protection

    In BP plc v 1. Elstone 2. Petrotechnics Ltd. , the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) had to determine whether a worker could bring a claim under Section 47B of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA) on the ground that he had suffered a detriment from his...

  • The Corporate Manslaughter Act

    The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 established a new statutory offence of corporate manslaughter (corporate culpable homicide in Scotland). An organisation is guilty of the offence if the way in which it manages or organises its...

  • A Guide to Dealing with Requests for Flexible Working Arrangements

    The statutory right to request flexible working arrangements is currently available to parents of children aged 17 and under (18 and under where the child is disabled) and employees who care for, or expect to care for, certain adults. An employee must have...

  • The Equality Act 2010 - A Guide for Employers

    The Equality Act 2010 has replaced nine major pieces of discrimination legislation and other ancillary measures that have been introduced over the last forty years. The core provisions of the Act came into force on 1 October 2010. As well as harmonising...

  • TUPE - Post-Transfer Obligations and Collective Agreements

    The Court of Appeal has overturned the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in Alemo-Herron and others v Parkwood Leisure Ltd. Parkwood Leisure Ltd. had taken over a company that acquired employees of the London Borough of Lewisham’s...

  • Collective Redundancy Consultation - Government Announces Changes

    EU Directive 98/59/EC, the Collective Redundancies Directive, was enacted into UK domestic law by the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA). Whilst the Directive requires a minimum consultation period of only 30 days for...

  • A Guide to the Agency Workers Regulations

    The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (AWR) came into force on 1 October 2011. All agency workers are entitled, from the first day of their assignment, to information on any job vacancies and to make use of collective facilities and amenities available to...

  • Protecting Business Interests

    When an employee leaves to go to work for another organisation, their employer may wish to have in place safeguards to protect sensitive information relating to the business, to prevent it from falling into the hands of a competitor. One possible way of...

  • Collective Redundancy Consultation - Decision Outside Scope of Directive, Rules ECJ

    In United States of America v Nolan , the Court of Appeal sought guidance from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as to the point at which the obligation to consult arises under Directive 98/59/EC, the Collective Redundancies Directive. Difficulties...

  • Whistleblowing - Disclosure Must Be Made In Good Faith

    The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA) – often referred to as the ‘Whistleblowing’ Act – came into force in July 1999. PIDA inserted new sections into the Employment Rights Act 1996 which give workers legal protection when...

  • Damages for Wrongful Dismissal

    The Supreme Court has ruled ( Edwards v Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust ) that a consultant surgeon who suffered a loss as a result of findings of personal and professional misconduct made against him in disciplinary proceedings that were...

  • In Brief: Assessment of Repetitive Tasks Tool

    Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are the most common occupational illness in Britain. They include problems such as low back pain, joint injuries and repetitive strain injuries of various sorts, and affect more than 500,000 people every year. They are often...

  • In Brief: ACAS E-learning Guides

    The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) now has ten electronic learning guides available on its website. The topics are: • bullying and harassment; • managing absence in the workplace; • handling redundancy; •...

  • Driving on Company Business

    Research by the Health and Safety Executive shows that 20 people are killed and 250 are seriously injured each week in traffic accidents involving someone driving for business reasons. The threat of employers being prosecuted for road accidents involving...

  • TUPE - What Constitutes an 'Organised Grouping of Employees'?

    A service provision change under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) takes place when, immediately before the transfer, there is an ‘organised grouping of employees’ situated in Great Britain which...

  • Dismissal and the Effective Date of Termination

    The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has overturned a decision of the Employment Tribunal (ET) that a revised notice of dismissal did not prevent an employee from completing the one year’s continuous employment necessary for him to bring a claim of...

  • Disability Discrimination - Normal Day-to-Day Activities

    For the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) , a person had a disability if they had a physical or mental impairment which had a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their normal day-to-day activities. Under the Equality Act 2010...

  • TUPE - Assignment of Pub Lease Not a TUPE Transfer

    The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has ruled ( Lom Management Ltd. v Sweeney ) that although the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) may apply when the lease of a commercial property has been assigned, this will...

  • TUPE - An Introduction

    The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 apply to any size of business and protect the employment rights of employees when their employer changes as a result of the relevant transfer of a business or a part of one. They...

  • Disability Discrimination - Failure to Make Reasonable Adjustments

    When deciding a reasonable adjustments claim under Section 4A of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (now replaced by the Equality Act 2010 ), the Employment Tribunal (ET) must identify the relevant provision, criterion or practice (PCP) and then...

  • Disability Discrimination - Limits on Duty to Make Reasonable Adjustments

    Under Section 4A of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), employers had a duty to make reasonable adjustments to working practices in order to ensure that a disabled employee was not disadvantaged. Under the Equality Act 2010 , which has now...

  • In Brief: Advice on Occupational Asthma

    The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates that each year between 1,500 and 3,000 people in Great Britain develop occupational asthma. The number rises to 7,000 cases a year if asthma made worse by work is taken into account. The cost to society is...

  • Informing and Consulting Employees

    The EU Information and Consultation Directive 2002 establishes minimum requirements for consulting and informing employees on a wide variety of subjects. The Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 implement the Directive in the UK. ...

  • Staff Handbooks and Contractual Rights

    It is not uncommon for employees’ contracts of employment to expressly incorporate the staff handbook, although much of its contents will refer to policy matters rather than having contractual status. The decision of the Court of Appeal in Keeley v...

  • Written Statement of Employment Particulars

    A contract of employment may be verbal but all employees, whether part-time or full-time, are entitled by law to be given a written statement setting out the main particulars of their employment, provided their employment lasts for one month or more. All the...

  • In Brief: Data Protection

    The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published a consolidated version of the guidance on data protection issues in employment. This brings together the four existing guides on recruitment and selection, employee records, monitoring at work and...

  • In Brief: ACAS Guidance on Holiday and Holiday Pay

    The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) has useful guidance for employers puzzling over staff holiday pay entitlements. The guidance leaflet gives a summary of holiday entitlements, setting out: the right to annual leave; when a...

  • In Brief: Working at Height Regulations

    Falls from height are the single biggest cause of workplace deaths and one of the main causes of serious injury. A place is ‘at height’ if there is a risk of a fall liable to cause personal injury. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 were...

  • In Brief: Guidance on Cancer and Working

    Employees diagnosed with progressive forms of cancer are regarded as having a disability for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 . Employers therefore have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to help employees overcome disadvantages arising from their...

  • In Brief: Guidance on Recruiting Refugees and Asylum Seekers

    The UK Border Agency has useful guidance to help UK employers understand the status of asylum seekers, refugees and those with humanitarian protection . This explains what documents employers should ask prospective employees to produce to ensure that they...

  • Supreme Court Rules in Equal Pay Case

    The Supreme Court has ruled, by a majority of three judges to two, that 174 former employees of Birmingham City Council who left their jobs between 2004 and 2008 do have the right to pursue their equal pay claims in the civil courts as breach of contract...

  • Stress - An Employer's Duties

    The 13th edition of the Absence Management survey report , which is produced by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in conjunction with healthcare provider Simplyhealth, found that in 2012 stress was the most common cause of...
Print pagePrintable Version

Latest News

Agency Workers and the 'Swedish Derogation' Exception
The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (AWR), which implement the EU Agency...
Read More
Stringfellows' Lap Dancer Not an Employee
The Court of Appeal has overturned the decision of the Employment Appeal T...
Read More
Employment Law Update 2013 - the latest position
Here is the latest news on the fast changing employment law developments ...
Read More