The EAT decision in this case confirms that a constructive dismissal claim can succeed even when the “last straw” act is innocuous. The Tribunal should have considered whether the earlier conduct established a fundamental breach of contract which had not been affirmed such that the innocuous conduct contributed to that. Read more…
A headline in The Times last week caught my eye. “Tribunals gridlocked by surge in claims” it shouted at me, as I perused the paper over lunch. Yes, we might be experiencing some delays in the tribunal service currently, but certainly here in South Yorkshire, to call them “gridlocked” would Read more…
In recent years there have been many employment law cases both in the UK and across Europe about what is “appropriate work attire”. The most high profile of these have been to do with an employee’s desire to express their religious beliefs through the wearing of headscarves or crucifixes at work. In Read more…
Proving discrimination in an Employment Tribunal case can often be difficult as discrimination in the workplace is frequently covert or inadvertent. The law therefore allows Tribunal’s to make inferences that discrimination has taken place as a result of the behaviour of an employer by changing the “burden of proof”. The recent case of Read more…
Before the concept of “service provision changes” was introduced into TUPE in 2006, the case law had developed over many years in relation to “traditional” business transfers. This included consideration of tricky issues such as whether a temporary cessation of the business is sufficient to prevent TUPE applying and whether Read more…
HR and people managers who regularly deal with disciplinary and grievance issues will be familiar with the situation where an employee requests to be accompanied to an internal hearing by someone who isn’t a trade union representative or work colleague. The usual position is that they do not have this right Read more…
In July 2013 the Government introduced fees for bringing employment tribunal claims for the first time. You may recall from our last blog about tribunal fees in June 2014 that Rebecca Hutchinson reported a dramatic drop in the number of claims being brought at the tribunals as a consequence of the Read more…
The law on protection for “whistleblowers” is contained within the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. A couple of years ago the Government made some amendments to this Act, the most important of which was widely reported to be a new requirement that disclosures needed to be made in the “public Read more…
It is a legal requirement for all employees to be provided with a statement of employment particulars within the first two months of employment. For most employers this statement is either incorporated into or serves as the contract of employment. However, there are plenty of employers who do not get Read more…
The Government has just announced the new maximum for the compensatory award in unfair dismissal claims and the new cap for a weeks’ pay to be used for calculating statutory redundancy pay and certain tribunal awards. From 6 April 2015, the cap on a weeks’ pay will rise to £475 Read more…