“HMRC boss sending worker unwanted birthday card was harassment“, said the Times Online yesterday, surely a second nailed-on candidate for 2024’s No Good Deed Awards after a similar allegation earlier this year in relation to offering an older worker a chair. Needless to say, there is somewhat more to the story than that, so those … Continue Reading
Into the second half of April we go with a strong contender for the No Good Deed prize in the 2024 Has it Really Come to This? Awards,. Employers staring aghast at news in the Times on Saturday that “Offering a seat to older staff risks discrimination” should not worry – there is a great … Continue Reading
The UK Government is altering the tax treatment of some termination payments for exits taking effect on or after 6 April. These changes are the product of the HMRC’s grotesquely misnamed Simplification of the Tax and NI Treatment of Termination Payments consultation paper in August 2015. The worst excesses of this have come off in the … Continue Reading
Back in 2014 we posted a piece on Moorthy –v- HMRC https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/taxing-times-for-uk-discrimination-claimant/, a case looking at the taxable status of payments to employees for injury to feelings caused by unlawful discrimination. Historically there had been an unspoken understanding that such compensation could be paid tax free, on top of the usual £30,000 allowance for termination … Continue Reading
So here is Friday’s teaser – let us suppose that an Employment Tribunal has just decided that you have been sexually harassed by your former boss, that he was fixated by your breasts, habitually stared at them and frequently addressed them while in conversation with you. He has also touched you, uninvited and unreciprocated, on … Continue Reading
Many fields of human endeavour give rise to sly phrases and painful euphemisms, but perhaps none more so than the world of employment relations. Maybe it is because the language of dismissal can be so brutal – sacked, severed, retrenched, terminated – that employers strive for something to soften the blow for the employee, or … Continue Reading
So is it age discrimination to called a teenage employee a “teenager”? All a question of context, the Employment Tribunal decided in Roberts –v- Cash Zone (Camberley) Limited last month, a ruling which also sheds some side-light on the use of other potentially discriminatory terms in the workplace. Ms Roberts was 18 when dismissed by … Continue Reading
