While some are already hanging up the Christmas decorations and squeezing back into their Christmas jumpers, the Belgian legislator has picked the festive season to introduce a number of new measures relating to well-being in the workplace. We will discuss these measures in a series of blogs. The first measure holds that the appointment of … Continue Reading
It has been annual review season here at Squire Patton Boggs. Looking back over my efforts this year in the usual endeavour to justify my own existence, I have spotted the same scenario cropping up with unusual frequency. An employee tells their employer that they have experienced something at work that they are not too … Continue Reading
French law has traditionally provided that absences due to non-occupational illness are not taken into account when determining the amount of paid leave accrued, as they do not constitute a period of actual work. Periods of absence due to an occupational accident or illness lasting more than one uninterrupted year are not taken into account … Continue Reading
Last week saw the publication of the draft Acas Code of Practice for handling requests for a “predictable working pattern”. When we previewed the draft Bill in February, we noted here Knew this would happen – entirely predictable problems with new working patterns Bill (UK) the lack of any definition of “predictable” despite the obvious … Continue Reading
Workplace monitoring has become a matter of particular contention in recent years. In a world where remote and hybrid working practices have become the norm, many employers have concerns about what their employees are actually doing while ‘at work’ elsewhere. This has led to an increasing amount of discussion about monitoring employees who are working … Continue Reading
Well, sort of. Almost nothing has changed in this month’s new government guidance on fit notes over the previous versions. You can receive a fit note digitally these days and (to reduce doctors’ workloads) a wider range of medical practitioners are now authorised to issue them, but officially that’s about it. That under-sells it, maybe … Continue Reading
When I tell people I am an Employment lawyer, it is not uncommon for them to assume out loud my days must be filled swinging metaphorical axes and terminating employees on all sides. While I always reassure them that that is not quite the case, today’s blog will not help this misconception disappear. The message … Continue Reading
Join Gregory Wald and Annabel Mace for an insightful and comprehensive webinar reviewing recent changes and trends in US I-9 and UK right to work rules and regulations on Wednesday, October 18, from 8:30 – 9:45 a.m. PDT / 4:30 – 5:45 p.m. BST. This webinar brings together legal experts in immigration and employment verification … Continue Reading
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
The Home Office is picking up the pace on immigration compliance matters – we have seen increased activity on everything from right to work enforcement to visa curtailments as well as requests for further evidence across all aspects of sponsorship. We will be focusing on these and other challenges in our webinar on 14 September … Continue Reading
The UK government has announced changes to the EU Settlement Scheme from September 2023 which will affect those living in the UK with pre-settled status. The changes have been made following the case of R (Independent Monitoring Authority for the Citizens’ Rights Agreements) v the Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] in which … 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
In connection with the funding of pay increases being offered in the public sector, the government has announced its plans to increase: No date has been set for the introduction of these increases but they are expected to be imminent given current economic pressures.… Continue Reading
Yesterday in R (on the application of ASLEF and ors) v Secretary of State for Business and Trade the High Court quashed the government’s controversial legislation which repealed the prohibition placed upon employment agencies from supplying temporary workers to businesses in order to backfill labour shortages caused by employees participating in industrial action. The proceedings … 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
The Department of Business and Trade recently issued its latest list of over 200 employers which have failed to pay at least the minimum wage. By the government’s reckoning, the underpayments uncovered amount to almost £5m, leaving 63,000 workers out of pocket. The employers range from large High Street names to sole traders, in what … 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
In our blog here, we noted EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s focus on the evolution of cartels in recent years, with the emergence of purchasing cartels and the focus in the US on ‘no-poach’ agreements, whereby companies agree not to recruit each other’s workers and/or fix wages. This is similar to a purchasing cartel, except … 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
On 1 May, the Italian government’s Council of Ministers approved a new “Labour Decree” that will make significant changes to current employment law provisions. The final text of the Decree has not yet been published in the Official Gazette, but below is a summary of the main provisions that will affect employers based on the … Continue Reading
Being married to a techie who was once a lawyer, and not without a degree of self-interest I have recently spent a good number of hours musing over the impact of GPT on the future of the legal profession. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer (memorise it, this will soon be a quiz question) and … Continue Reading
