News Category: Employment

8 April 2016

In Craig v Bob Lindfield and Son Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has held that there is no implied term that a period of lay-off will be no more than is reasonable. In this case, an employee who resigned after being laid off for four and a half weeks without pay was not found to have been constructively dismissed, as there had been a genuine downturn in work which led to the employer operating a contractual lay-off clause and the employer had a reasonable expectation that further work would become available within four weeks. Read more

8 April 2016

Article 7 of the Working Time Directive (WTD) gives workers the right to be paid during their annual leave. Unfortunately, it does not then specify how holiday pay should be calculated. In British Gas Trading Ltd v Lock and anor, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has confirmed the position taken in Bear Scotland Ltd and ors v Fulton: The Working Time Regulations 1998 can be interpreted in line with the WTD, so as to include results-based commission payments when calculating holiday pay for the basic four weeks' annual leave. Read more

8 April 2016

Following the introduction of the Government's National Living Wage on 1 April 2016, The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) has issued new guidance on calculating the National Minimum Wage: Read more

28 January 2016

In this month's legislation update, we review two important pieces of legislation affecting employers and which will come into force in early 2016. Read more

28 January 2016

Recently there has been a lot of press attention about the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Barbulescu v Romania. Some sensationalist commentators have been quick to decry the death of privacy for employees. Others have said that the judgment does little to change the current law. But what does this judgment actually mean? Read more

28 January 2016

In Griffiths v The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2015] EWCA Civ 1265, the Court of Appeal has held that the threshold for sanctions under a sickness absence policy can be subject to the duty to make reasonable adjustments, but considered what adjustments would be seen as "reasonable" in the circumstances. Read more

29 May 2015

An employment tribunal can decide whether to make a costs order. The recent case of Chadburn v Doncaster & Bassetlaw Hospital NHS Foundation Trust makes it clear that, in making its decision, the tribunal will not only consider what the claimant can afford to pay at the time the costs award is made but may take future income into account. Read more

18 May 2015

The law provides protection for a business’ confidential information. This protection is often strengthened through formal confidentiality provisions in contracts or specific non-disclosure agreements. However, there can often be considerable uncertainty as to whether knowledge that an employee develops is confidential information protected in law, or whether it is the employee's own knowledge that he is free to exploit elsewhere after his employment. Read more

15 October 2014

In a recent decision the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) adopted a restrictive interpretation of an employee's duty to inform his employer "as soon as reasonably practicable" when taking time off work to deal with emergencies involving his dependants. Read more

18 September 2014

In a recent decision an employment tribunal held that an employer’s policy to pay maternity pay at an enhanced rate was not discriminatory towards male employees who only received the statutory rate of paternity pay. Read more