Back in February I offered here some thoughts on the main practical problems implicit in what was then the Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Bill. It was a mess, missing explanations of key concepts and grossly over-engineered for its objectives. That makes it all the more depressing to report that it has now received Royal … Continue Reading
Twenty years on from the introduction of the flexible working regime, Acas is looking again at its statutory Code of Practice, last tweaked in 2014 and of course already largely overtaken since then by the seismic shift in working practices caused by ever-more capable IT, the pandemic lockdowns and industrial discord on the railways. This … Continue Reading
So here we go again, another attempt to legislate against workplace bullying. This is not the first – back in 2001 there was a Dignity at Work bill, a fantastically inept piece of drafting crippled alike by internal processes more complicated than the wiring diagram of a battleship and the inevitable (and as it turned … Continue Reading
If you are prepared to accept “bold” as a substitute for “reasoned and sensible”, then there is much to like in the government’s formal response to its 2020 consultation on restrictive covenants, which was finally published last month. It is this which seeks to explain the thinking behind the proposal we covered here – to … Continue Reading
Back in March 2020 we reported here on some new guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office concerning DSARs. In particular, we looked at what it said about the employer’s rights not to comply with a DSAR to the extent that it was manifestly unfounded or manifestly excessive, and concluded that despite the superficially encouraging words … Continue Reading
Employers in the hospitality, leisure and service sectors should be aware that the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 has now completed the parliamentary process and will be coming into force at some point in 2024, most likely May. This particular piece of legislation has been a long time coming – the suggestion was … Continue Reading
Of course it could just be coincidence, but scarcely hours after my post last week concerning the dearth of the employment law candidates for the Brexit red-tape bonfire, out pops a Gov.uk policy paper on “Smarter Regulation to Grow the Economy” containing the first five suggested victims. And what a woeful little bunch they are, … Continue Reading
Things have surely come to a pretty pass when it is front page news twice in two weeks that the Government has decided not to press on with doing something daft. First, the abandonment of smart motorways and last week, reports that the Government has backed away from its original proposal to wipe all EU-sourced … Continue Reading
Last week the government issued its first official guidance on ethnicity pay gap reporting. Somewhat unusually among gov.uk workplace guidance, it is prospectively a very useful read. To its immediate credit, for example, it accepts right up front that there can be many legitimate reasons for disparities in average pay between ethnic minority groups. “It … Continue Reading
It’s not generally too difficult to know when you’ve been dismissed. Your P45 arrives, colleagues avoid eye contact and your entry pass stops working. But sometimes it’s not so clear and where your statutory or contractual rights may hang upon it, you cannot afford not to be sure. In Meaker – v – Cyxtera Technology … Continue Reading
Last week the government voiced its support for the new Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Bill, the endeavour of MP Scott Benton to combat “one-sided flexibility”, where “workers are on stand-by for work which never comes”, it says in the BEIS press release. This is a belated by-product of the Taylor Good Work Report in … Continue Reading
Back in November 20201 we reported here on some new Acas guidance on changing terms of employment through dismissal and re-engagement, and in November last year on the Government’s intention to issue a new statutory Code on that practice here. A first draft of that Code has now landed and we can exclusively report that … Continue Reading
As the next in our occasional series of posts about The Law, here is a new Employment Appeal Tribunal decision so morally unjust that even the Judge himself didn’t want to make it. Mrs Bacon was married to the majority shareholder of their joint employer, Advanced Fire Solutions Limited. She was also employee, director and … Continue Reading
Christmas being a season of peace on Earth and goodwill to all men, so they say despite all the evidence, here is a quick festive look at just how confrontational things have to become in order to constitute a dispute at law. The question is a surprisingly important one, since on the existence of a … Continue Reading
On Monday this week the Government issued its response to its 2021 consultation on the flexible working regime. We wrote about some of the original proposals here. Some didn’t make the cut, so we are left with five key points for employers.… Continue Reading
There is a long-established legal principle that you can only imply an employment relationship in the face of a contract saying something different if it is necessary to do so, i.e. if the found facts of the relationship are not consistent with any other explanation, in particular, worker status or genuine self-employment. Until the Court … Continue Reading
So if in some parallel universe you had somehow acquired the ability to strike red lines through EU-derived employment legislation, where would you put them? That is a question I put well before the Brexit Referendum to countless HR audiences, the very people one might think would be straining at the leash to make changes … Continue Reading
So, quick, answer me this – when making redundancies outside the collective consultation rules, do you need to consult with the affected employees about the selection criteria relied upon or only as to the proposed impact of those criteria on that person? Traditional wisdom would point to the latter. The selection criteria are a matter … Continue Reading
You would think that in the twenty-plus years since they were first introduced as an alternative to the Acas COT3, all that could be said about the law relating to settlement agreements would have been said. However, along now comes the Scottish Employment Appeal Tribunal in Bathgate –v- Technip UK Limited and Others with a … Continue Reading
The thing about one-stop shops is that if they do not stock what you want, they become next best thing to useless. Anyway, welcome to the government’s new Guidance on Employment Status, expressly billed in the accompanying press release as meeting all your worker status needs in one handy document. … Continue Reading
If you are in the habit of taking your life-advice from Tik Tok, you will have seen encouragement recently to join the “quiet-quitters”. These are the Gen Z workers who make a conscious decision to do the bare minimum at work, those who have “left the building” mentally (and if hybrid working, also physically) but … Continue Reading
Oops. Just found an unanswered question left over from our investigations webinar and blog series earlier in the year. Apologies if it was yours. The question revolves around employer and investigator interactions with the Police where the subject matter of your workplace investigation is potentially criminal conduct, and is maybe best answered as a series … Continue Reading
In earlier posts on this blog you will find a handful of cases which consider the distinction between the fact of a protected whistle-blowing disclosure and the manner of it. Accepted wisdom, thanks in part to the unimprovable words of then Mr Justice Underhill in Martin -v-Devonshires Solicitors here is that an employer can in … Continue Reading
Parliament’s Private Members’ Bills ballot gives backbench MPs the opportunity to propose new legislation or changes to existing laws on a topic of their choice. We wouldn’t normally report on Private Members’ Bills as very few of them ever become actual law and some are downright silly – if you can still find it, take … Continue Reading
