The Employment Appeal Tribunal has recently handed down a judgment which serves as a useful reminder for employers of the risks of taking disciplinary action against union representatives for behaviour which may look like misconduct but which actually constitutes union activity.
By way of background, section 146(1)(b) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 provides that a worker has the right not to be subjected to any detriment by his employer for the sole or main purpose of preventing or deterring him from, or penalising him for, taking part in union activities.
The range of employers who may be liable for the misclassification of workers just got bigger. On January 14, 2021, the California Supreme Court decided that the decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court (2018) 4 Cal.5th 903 (Dynamex) applies retroactively to all non-final cases that predate the April 2018 Dynamex decision.
On Friday last week the Financial Times reported on proposals from the Business Department to “rip up worker protections” under the current Working Time Regulations. But simultaneously on BBC News online, look, it’s the Business Secretary himself denying on twitter any notion that his department is planning to dilute UK workers’ rights. The very idea. Instead any changes will “protect and enhance workers’ rights going forward“.
On January 6, 2021, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) announced a final rule clarifying the standard under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) for determining whether a worker is an independent contractor versus an employee. This distinction in critical under the FLSA, as employers must comply with its minimum wage and overtime requirements for employees, but not independent contractors. The regulatory guidance outlined in the final rule regarding independent contractor status is generally applicable across all industries, replaces all previous DOL interpretations of independent contractor status under the FLSA, and is intended to be the governing interpretation for this analysis going forward. The DOL published the 
So here we are all again and, says the Government’s latest guidance, able to leave home to work only where it is “unreasonable for you to do your job from home“. This is the umpteenth permutation of the same underlying message about working from home if you can, and was almost certainly meant to say where it is “not reasonably practicable” for you to work from home, or where you “cannot reasonably be expected” to do so, rather than where your doing so is unreasonable in itself, which is basically a nonsense. Is this a deliberate dilution or softening of robust earlier messages about WFH unless “absolutely necessary” or “where the job requires it“, or not?
