Phoenix House Limited -v- Stockman has been kicking round the Employment Tribunal system ever since Ms Stockman was dismissed in 2013. It has something for all the family – discrimination, some victimisation, a touch of whistleblowing and a light dusting of trust and confidence. However, on its second trip to the Employment Appeal Tribunal at … Continue Reading
I gave a talk last week on constructive knowledge of disability, i.e. the point where the employer didn’t actually know its employee was disabled, but is nonetheless held liable because on the facts it ought to have done.… Continue Reading
Forget the law for a moment and answer me this. If: despite having no reasonable grounds to hold that view, I genuinely believe that someone made a racist remark about me; and I sit on that belief without a murmur of complaint for four years; and when my work is entirely justifiably criticised, I then … Continue Reading
They do say that maternity in the workplace can be an unsettling and confusing time, leaving you confronting new questions and situations that no one has really prepared you for, and where the guidance comes at you from a range of sources as wide as they are inconsistent. Anyway, enough about employers.… Continue Reading
The Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service have now rolled out the details of the scheme to refund claimants and respondents who paid a fee at an Employment Tribunal or the Employment Appeal Tribunal between 29 July 2013 and 26 July 2017. This is of course the necessary result of the … Continue Reading
It is a basic plank of a fair disciplinary dismissal that it be preceded by a reasonable investigation. But what is that, exactly? How much detail must you include in your enquiry, how many witnesses must you grill, how far back do you have to go, how far must you challenge or test the evidence … Continue Reading
Rumbling around at the less well-publicised end of the holiday pay saga is the question of just how far back such claims can go. Changes to the Employment Rights Act 1996 limited this to two years for claims brought after 1 July 2015, but thanks to Bear Scotland Limited, the actual exposure may be very … Continue Reading
In a boost to the cause of inept line management everywhere, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held last month that it is not permissible to extrapolate without more from conduct which is unreasonable, incompetent and lackadaisical to that which is discriminatory. The point is not wholly new. Back in 1998 the then House of Lords heard … Continue Reading
Fans of the unnecessary medicalisation of management issues in the workplace will be sadly disappointed by a new Employment Appeal Tribunal decision at the end of December. For everyone else, Herry – v – Dudley MBC represents a very sensible and timely reminder of where the line lies between being disabled on the one hand … Continue Reading
All the lawyers are saying that Brexit won’t make any difference to English employment law (and in terms of black and white statute law that is probably true) but here is one of those very few cases which might genuinely have gone the other way if it had been brought after the UK leaves the … Continue Reading
UK employers take note – the Employment Appeal Tribunal has recently ruled that an employer was obliged to continue paying a disabled employee his full salary even though he had been redeployed into a less well paid role because he could no longer carry out his normal duties as a result of his disability. Such … Continue Reading
Right, there it is, and still no one really any the wiser as to what to do about it. The decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in British Gas -v- Lock Lock v British Gas reaches the inevitable conclusion that some commissions must be included in the calculation of holiday pay, but offers no help … Continue Reading
A finding of race discrimination in the UK requires the employee to show both (a) that he was less favourably treated on grounds of race; and (b) that he suffered a detriment. The need to establish (b) separately is often overlooked, in that less favourable treatment is, by itself, pretty invariably a detriment. However, the … Continue Reading
First of all, this case is not as bad for employers as it looks. Second, however, it still has ample time to become so. Back in 2013, the Employment Rights Act was amended to stop employees claiming that they had blown the whistle (and so gained all the protections which go with that) through random … Continue Reading
Back at the end of July we noted the decision of the Liverpool Employment Tribunal in Gerry Abrams Limited –v- EAD Solicitors LLP that a limited company could claim age discrimination. That rather surprising conclusion then went off to the Employment Appeal Tribunal which has just found in unassailably clear terms that this is correct … Continue Reading
In almost every TUPE transfer, whether a business sale or a service provision change (SPC), you come eventually to the chap receiving permanent health insurance benefits. The transferor has no need for him any longer and the transferee has no wish to bump up its own PHI premiums for someone who is seemingly never going … Continue Reading
When a client asks you to take one of your staff off its account, you will tend to jump to it – the client is always right, even when it’s wrong, and you can hopefully find the displaced employee a berth on another account, no harm done. However, where the client is asking you to … Continue Reading
Have you ever looked at the other side’s Schedule of Loss in a Tribunal case and wondered if he inhabits the same legal system you do? Employment Tribunals routinely require such Schedules to try to bring some order and boundaries to both sides’ financial thinking, but this does not always work. Sometimes the compensation at … Continue Reading
I’ll preface this blog by saying that I don’t play golf, nor do I really watch golf on television. I am firmly in Mark Twain’s “good walk spoiled” school on this one. The recent Ryder Cup however, I could get on board with. Pantomime cheering and booing like a TV talent show, fierce one-on-one competition, … Continue Reading
Are you neither complacent nor unduly sensitive or suspicious? Are you fair-minded, informed and balanced? Do you often catch buses in Clapham? In that case, the Employment Tribunal has just the job for you, a role integral to the administration of legal justice, though sadly not paid very well, or indeed at all. If you … Continue Reading
“Without more, to conduct a case by not telling the truth is to conduct a case unreasonably, it is as simple as that”. A difficult proposition to challenge, you might think. How much more fundamental to the reasonable conduct of judicial proceedings can you get than telling the truth? However, it is not so simple … Continue Reading
The EAT recently reiterated the importance of a well worded warning in JJ Food Service Limited v Kefil, providing a clear and rather depressing reminder of the importance of not taking for granted the knowledge of management in disciplinary proceedings. Mr Kefil was described as overly authoritarian manager who relied on bullying and intimidating behaviour. … Continue Reading
Though the Pope may now have stepped down on health grounds, his name lives on in some surprising quarters, most recently the Employment Appeal Tribunal. During the Pope’s visit to the UK in 2010, The Times newspaper was preparing a story about allegations that he had protected a paedophile priest. A Times editor, Mr Wilson, … Continue Reading
If you make some horrible error in your treatment of an employee, how far can your addressing it swiftly prevent it becoming a constructive dismissal claim? Two quite similar stories in the law reports shed some light on this. In 2010 the Court of Appeal concluded in Bournemouth University Higher Education Corporation –v- Buckland that … Continue Reading
