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
Despite what seems to be almost universal opposition to its proposals, the government has changed the law to allow employment businesses to supply temporary workers to cover for striking workers. Regulation 7 of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 prohibits employment businesses from supplying temporary workers to cover (i) the duties … Continue Reading
Since most workplace investigations involve something contested, most investigation reports will disappoint one party or the other. Indeed, since very few workplace disputes are exclusively the responsibility of one party alone, it is entirely possible if you put your mind to it that at one level or another your report will be a disappointment to … Continue Reading
Your report is done, so what next? Where does it go now and what should you do with all your papers? As a rule, your “client” for the purposes of the investigation is your employer, not any one or more of the individuals who may have participated in it. It needs to be able to … Continue Reading
As a break from workplace investigations and before Covid’s threatened resurgence as an issue for employers, how about this new slice of “gay cake” case law around what should and should not happen when your religious beliefs clash with the requirements of your job? In Mackereth –v- DWP & Another this week, the claimant was … Continue Reading
So you have asked your questions and made your notes and looked at any relevant documents. You have formed the necessary views about what happened if that is the question or why it did if that is the issue instead. Now you just have to write it all down and a good job done, yes? … Continue Reading
Nearly 700 sign-ups for our workplace investigations webinar earlier this month gives a clear indication that this once relatively unfashionable area of HR law and practice is very much dish of the day at the moment, so from the first ten parts on this blog in December-February, now seems the time to move on to … Continue Reading
So you’ve seen the news stories about the chap suing Sainsburys for not letting him in with his “assistance cat”, yes? He suffers from severe autism and unless accompanied by his cat, finds the noise, lights and crowds within the store impossible to manage. You would allow in a guide dog, he says, so what’s … Continue Reading
So following our recent post on proposed new regulations it’s not just the EU which is looking askance at the potential risks of artificial intelligence in recruitment. From across the pond comes news that the US Department of Justice has warned employers to take steps to ensure that the use of AI in recruitment does … Continue Reading
A basic principle of good employment law, you would think, should be that you can tell an employer when you are caught by it and when you are not. An early fail then for the rules around worker status, in particular following the EAT’s recent decision in Johnson –v- Transopco UK Limited, which appears to … Continue Reading
