August 14th, 2010
The right to request time to train was included in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act which came into force for employees in large organisations (employers with more than 250 employees) from April 2010, with plans for it to be extended to all employers in April 2011.
The right allows any employee with 26 weeks service to apply for time off for training. The employer has various reasons they can decline this request, but the burden of formalities necessary to deal with the application (unless the application is approved, a meeting must be held within 28 days, followed by written reasons for the decision) would always arise. An Impact Assessment put the cost of this regulation at £359m per annum for SMEs.
As the Government is now reviewing all regulations, a further consultation has now been announced that will consider this right further – whether the right should be repealed; if it should be extended to smaller businesses or retained only for larger organisations; or whether the process should be amended, making compliance less of a burden on employers.
The consultation period is short, responses necessary by 15 September, followed by a decision in December.
Posted in Flexible Working, General News, Laws & Regulations | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2010
A new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research and campaign group Internocracy suggests employers are. The very legitimate arguments put forward in the report are that interns are ‘workers’ under the National Minimum Wage Act, and therefore due at least the national minimum wage (and the workers would probably be due holiday pay too).
The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 defines ‘worker’, employee’ etc. at Section 54, relying on no external sources. Exclusions from the minimum wage are provided for under Sections 43- 45, within which there is nothing to imply that an intern who agrees to undertake to perform personally any work or services should be classified as anything less than a worker.
Kayte Lawton, report co-author and research fellow at ippr, said:
“Too many employers don’t understand the law when it comes to hiring interns. There is a mistaken belief that employers can take on people on a voluntary basis if both sides agree – but that’s not what the law says.”
The report suggests that there could be 250,000 intern placements this year, and based on other studies referred to in the report, that could mean some 115,000 workers could have a claim for failure to pay the minimum wage.
Employers need to realise that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and equally there is no such thing as free labour. For advice on this matter, or all your employment law needs, please contact Employment Law Clinic.
To answer the title question of this post, most probably:
Why Interns Need a Fair Wage by Kayte Lawton and Dominic Potter is free to download from http://www.ippr.org.uk/members/download.asp?f=%2Fecomm%2Ffiles%2FWhy+interns+need+a+fair+wage%2Epdf
Posted in Employment Tribunals, General News, Laws & Regulations | No Comments »
July 29th, 2010
Following the announcement in the Budget that the DRA would be phased out from April 2011, with the exception of a six month transition from the existing regulations – the latest date that an employee could be retired under the DRA would need to fall before 1 October 2011 – the Government has today published proposals that will prevent retirement in most workplaces.
Currently employers can make staff retire at 65 regardless of their circumstances, but this is set to change from 6 April 2011. From this date, employers wishing to have a compulsory retirement age will need to objectively justify this with a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
In the absence of an objectively justifiable retirement age, employers will need to rely upon a reason set out in section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 – following an appropriate disciplinary procedure. The reasons will have to relate to:
- capability or qualification of the employee;
- the conduct of the employee;
- redundancy;
- the employee being unable to continue to work in the position due to a legal duty or restriction.
The consultation is open until 21 October 2010, and can be found at www.bis.gov.uk/retirement-age.
Employers with a staff approaching retirement (either the default 65 or any other retirement age that the employment contract currently dictates), should make plans now to ensure all actions are taken in good time. For all other cases, employers will need to ensure their disciplinary procedures are comprehensive & robust enough to reply upon to end employment. For a free consultation & review of your disciplinary policies, or for general advice on conducting disciplinary procedures, write to us at dra@employmentlawclinic.com, or for more advice see the disciplinary pages on this site.
Posted in Discrimination, General News, Laws & Regulations | No Comments »
July 27th, 2010
PC Simon Harwood, the Pc who struck Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests on 1 April 2009, will face gross misconduct disciplinary charges, the Metropolitan Police have announced.
While disciplinary procedures should normally be taken promptly after an alleged incident has been identified, the Employment Appeals Tribunal – in the case of Secretary of State for Justice v Mansfield – have ruled that decision-makers, where an employee facing disciplinary proceedings is at the same time being investigated by the police, have a wide discretion whether to continue or postpone the disciplinary hearing.
This option is available to small businesses, and could be applied for example, where employers are dealing with cases of theft or driving incidents, although it is not always the best option: even if an employee is given a custodial sentence, they may still remain employees (frustration of the contract would require a lengthy absence from employment), and attract the benefits associated with that. Each case will need to be assessed on its own merits, but employers should carefully consider whether to suspend a disciplinary process while any police investigation is ongoing.
Posted in Contracts of Employment, General News | No Comments »
July 24th, 2010
The Tribunals Service, an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Justice, published its first annual statistics recently; this included the latest employment tribunal statistics, showing a rise in claims for most jurisdictions.
In real terms (claims figures can be distorted by multiple claims, particularly when these are in the thousands. The single cases measure is more reliable to observe actual trends), there was a 14% increase in claims to employment tribunals; this increases to 56% when multiple claims are considered.
Of the claims made in 2009-10, 112,400 were disposed of – actually went to a ruling – an increase of 22% over the 2008-09 figures (almost 60% of these cases were single cases).
Notable among the claims were those made under:
- Working Time Directive – an increase of nearly 300%;
- unauthorised deductions from wages- an increase of 123%;
- redundancy pay – claims under this jurisdiction increased by 76%;
- Transfer of Undertakings – 38% more claims under what is a complicated law for those employers taking over a business;
- age discrimination (cases of the nature brought by Berry & Keane) - this relatively new jurisdiction saw claims increase by 37%;
- written pay statement – a very simply thing for employers to comply with saw claims rise by 27%;
- written statement of terms & conditions (Statement of Particulars) – another relatively simply obligation for employers to comply with, yet claims rose by 20%.
On a more positive note, there were notable decreases in claims for:
- redundancy (failure to inform and consult) – claims were down 34%;
- Part-time Workers Regulations – claims were down nearly 20%;
- National Minimum Wage – claims here were down by more than 16%.
Of the cases that did proceed to a tribunal hearing, twice as many (28,500) were successful as those failing (14,300).
The current information does not include the average value of awards made by the employment tribunals, but details for 2009-10 will be provided when available.
If your business does find itself among the thousands of respondents in 2010-2011, give it the best chance to be among the 14,300 successfully defending the claim – get complete support from the moment you receive an ET3.
Posted in Employment Tribunals, General News | No Comments »
July 4th, 2010
Theresa May, Equalities Minister, has confirmed the government will press ahead with the implementation of the Equality Act from October.
There had been some recent speculation in employment law circles that the legislation would not follow the original timetable set-out by the last Labour government. This was fuelled by a discovery that references to implementation from October were removed from the Government Equalities Office’s website.
Following Mrs May’s confirmation, employers should now expect key parts of the legislation to come into force from October, and start planning accordingly.
Posted in General News, Laws & Regulations | No Comments »
