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Unfair dismissal: will the increase in the qualifying period help businesses?

7th October 2011

This summer has been a quiet time on the employment law front. However, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (and party conferences) arrived in a heat wave of proposed changes to legislation. George Osborne had two notable announcements to make regarding employment law. Firstly, the government intends to raise the length of service requirement […]

Employment Tribunal Statistics: a reminder of how the recession has hit UK employers

9th September 2011

Every year, the Tribunal Service, which includes the employment tribunals, publishes its statistics. Usually, not a great deal changes from one year to the next. However, the 2009/10 statistics showed that there had been a 56% increase in claims brought in the employment tribunals. With 236,100 claims over all, this was the highest total ever. […]

Do you need to pay your interns?

24th May 2011

Kerry Hudson, an intern who had been working on the My Village web site for two months, successfully sued TPG Web Publishing Ltd for the minimum wage and unpaid holiday. This follows a recent case brought by an Equity member Nick Thomas-Webster against a production company. The question raised by these cases is should you […]

Taking a sickie: how will you deal with weddingitis?

14th April 2011

With the Royal wedding looming, our thoughts turned to those employees who are not getting the day off and just how many of them might suffer from a sudden stomach bug or bad cold. Short-term sickness absence can cost a business a lot of lost time and money, particularly if you pay full salary for […]

National Sickie Day

9th February 2011

Monday 7th February was National Sickie Day. I hadn’t heard of it either until last week, I was asked to comment on sickness issues by a journalist from the Daily Record. So what is National Sickie Day? It’s the day when employees across the country are most likely to take a day off instead of facing work. According […]

Will the proposed “Employers Charter” make employers lives easier?

17th January 2011

The government proposes to launch consultation on what is being called a new “Employers Charter”. The proposals were discussed last week at a jobs summit at Downing Street, attended by a number major British employers. The proposals include a rise in the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from one year to two and a fee […]

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…

29th November 2010

Despite us having at least one decent period of snow each year, are employers ready to cope with the consequences? During the snow we had at the start of this year, I negotiated a termination settlement while my client was trapped in his car on a motorway. Luckily, his mobile phone was working, frankly he […]

Bank holiday on 29th April 2011: are you prepared?

26th November 2010

The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on 29 April 2011 will be marked by a public holiday across the UK. What should you do about it? A bit of history first: when the right to holiday pay was introduced by the Working Time Regulations in 1998, it mirrored the EU Working Time Directive […]

CAN THE SYSTEM CATCH UP WITH THE LIKES OF JOHN BERRY?

19th November 2010

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has just dismissed four appeals from John Berry against recruitment agencies and employers. All four Respondents had posted job adverts requesting “school leavers” or “recent Graduates”. Mr John Berry, age 54, claimed that he had been discriminated against because of his age by these adverts even though he failed to […]

Networking and time

29th October 2010

I was invited to give a talk last night at the Edinburgh Curry Club and for various reasons which I won’t bore you with, there was a bit of a change on the topic of discussion late yesterday afternoon. Instead of my plan, I spoke about a whistle blowing case that I dealt with for […]