Happy New Year to all of our regular readers. The General Election will take place on 7 May 2015. Experienced HR and employment law practitioners will know that General Elections matter to employment law. Over recent years successive Governments have made major changes to the balance of employment rights and Read more…
Last month I posted a blog on the ground breaking Judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in the case of Bear Scotland v Fulton and others on holiday pay and overtime. Since then there have been two significant developments. Firstly, the Unite union, which represents the claimants in the Hertel (UK) Ltd Read more…
Businesses will welcome the first reported case confirming that set-off is available in an employment tribunal. The Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld a tribunal’s decision that the defence of set-off is available to an employer in a contract claim brought by a former employee in the tribunal and that the law Read more…
Following the decision in Dyer v London Ambulance NHS Trust this week, a case which confirmed that it was unreasonable to expect an employer to ban its employees from wearing perfume or aerosol deodorants for fear of setting off a disabled employee’s severe allergic reaction to aerosols, we explore some Read more…
In addition to our blog on Employment Tribunal statistics, the BIS has also conducted a survey on Tribunal users and applications received in 2013. The document is rather large at 280 pages, however if you would like to read the full report, it is at httpss://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/316704/bis-14-708-survey-of-employment-tribunal-applications-2013.pdf. The most interesting findings Read more…
Employment Tribunal statistics for the first quarter of 2014 have been published today. In light of the introduction of Employment Tribunal fees last year, these statistics have been eagerly awaited. You may recall from our previous blog that the statistics for the period from October to December 2013 showed a Read more…
The law in relation to “whistleblowing” in the UK was introduced by the Government in 1998 to protect genuine whistleblowers in the workplace and thereby encourage a culture of openness and good governance. In practice many threatened “whistleblowing” claims tend to be more about an individual seeking to maximise their Read more…
An employer’s duty to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled employee only arises where the employer knows or is reasonably expected to know that the employee has a disability. Assessing whether an employee is disabled can be difficult, particularly in a case of mental illness. In the recent Court of Read more…
Ever been in a situation where you are expecting a Tribunal claim from a troublesome former employee and you have a date three months less one day after dismissal circled in your calendar? Well the case of Robinson v Bowskill and ors is a recent Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) case Read more…
The cap on the unfair dismissal award will be the lower of £74,200 or one year’s gross pay with effect from 29 July 2013 (we knew this was happening sometime this month, but now the commencement date is confirmed). This will give both parties a more realistic expectation of what Read more…