Archive for June, 2008
By Philip - Friday, June 20th, 2008
Consultation has now opened on the proposed new right for employees to request time off for training and for such requests to be seriously considered by employers. The proposal suggests that the right would mirror the right to flexible working currently in existence.
The Government is inviting your views during the consultation period which will run until September 2008. No doubt there is a wide ranging spectrum of views ranging from:
- The skills gap starts at school, many school leavers can’t read and write either at all or to the required standard, government should concentrate on that issue rather than imposing further regulation on business.Get basic skills right before building extra skills on top.
- The country needs to move up the skills chain and anything that encourages employers to train and re-skill their workforce should be encouraged.
The legal profession requires each Solicitor to have a mandatory 16 hours of CPD (continuing professional development) each year.The profession is also opening a skills academy to systemise and identify the skills required to practice succesfully.
Whatever way you look skills are moving up the agenda.
Posted in Uncategorized | No comments »
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By Emma - Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Not content with the new laws brought in at the end of February to prosecute employers who employ illegal workers the Home Office has announced a new initiative designed to crack down on the hiring of people without the right to work in the UK. As of today the names of businesses who break the rules and employ illegal workers will be named and shamed on the Home Office’s UK Border Agency’s website. See more here.
Remember we can help you ensure you meet Home Office requirements relating to your employees’ right to work in the UK. We can advise on the documentation you need to obtain to satisfy yourselves about an employee’s immigration status and we can also advise on ways it might be possible to obtain permission for someone to work for you if they are not able to currently.
Posted in Business Immigration, Right to Work in the UK | No comments »
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By Liam - Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
If you are still awake after reading the title of this blog post (and even if you are not), these little used regulations provide a means of employers who offer their employees pensions with a means of dismissing employees by reason of redundancy without making a redundancy payment or with a reduced redundancy payment. In practice, they are only likely to be of significant assistance where the employee has a defined benefit (final salary) pension or a sizeable pension pot in a defined contribution (money purchase) scheme.
The regulations only apply in limited circumstances:
1. Where the employee is entitled to draw his pension (both periodical payments and lump sum) immediately on ceasing to be an employee and the annual pension payable will be equal to or greater than one third of his annual pay, no redundancy pay is due to the employee.
2. Where the employee is entitled to draw his pension (both periodical payments and lump sum) immediately on ceasing to be an employee, his redundancy pay can be reduced by the proportion which the annual value of the pension bears to one-third of that employee’s annual pay.
3. Where an employee is entitled to draw his pension (both periodical payments and lump sum) within 90 weeks of the termination of his employment, his redundancy pay can be reduced by the proportion which the annual value of the pension bears to one-third of that employee’s annual pay providing that for each week that is to elapse between the end of employment and the start of pension payments, the weekly value of the pension is added to the proportion of redundancy pay that is payable. There is a limit of the amount of redundancy pay the employee would receive but for the 1965 Regulations on the total of the redundancy pay and pension pay added together.
Posted in Categories, Redundancy Payment | No comments »
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By Philip - Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
The EAT president has just dealt with a case involving allegations of sexual harassment brought against the individual harasser and their employer.
Points to note:
1. There is no requirement to bring a grievance against the individual, there was a requirement to bring a grievance against the employer, a school.
2. Where the grievance was brought against the school, the time limit extended by 3 months to make a total of 6 months from the last act complained of.
3. The inferred fact that the employee did not know that time would not extend for a claim against the individual was an acceptable reason to justify a late claim against an individual.
4 Tribunals should not salami slice sexual harassment claims into discrete acts and look at each individually but look at the harassment allegations as a “continuing state,” (as per Hendricks) thereby running time from the last act complained of
5. The employer could not run the reasonably practicable steps defence, thereby passing liability to the individual employee, as there was no evidence that there was a dignity at work policy or any employee had been trained in it.
This reads like a particularly nasty case of harassment involving a male person in power (an assistant head) abusing his position to harass sexually a subordinate (a teaching assistant) .The allegations included one of rape. It is particularly surprising that a school did not educate its employees about dignity at work.
Posted in Sex/Race Discrimination | No comments »
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By Philip - Monday, June 16th, 2008
The tax free allowance on termination for employees has been stuck at £30k for as long as I can remember. There has been no annual upgrading of this allowance as there has been for, say, redundancy payments or unfair dismissal compensation. This means that the concept of fiscal drag applies as inflation degardes the value of £30k year on year.
What prompts this post is a little clause in this years Finance Bill (section 49 to be precise) which amends section 291 of the 2003 Income Tax Act to ensure that the Mayor of London and Members of the GLA receive a tax free payment when they are relieved of their offices by a (no doubt) grateful electorate.
Is there any reason why Ken Livingstone should be paid his £69k tax free, when lesser (or greater) mortals would pay £15,600 tax on the same redundancy payment.
If you look at it logically, MPs and Mayors have greater job security than the majority of the population, the majority of the population are a notice period away from unemployment (say 12 weeks), MPs are a parliamentary term away from unemployment (say 5 years) or a lifetime (if they happen to occupy a safe seat).
Surely those who govern us don’t have one rule for them and another for us? I’ll have to dig out my old copy of Animal Farm to remind myself that equality means one thing for the governors and another for the governed.
Posted in Tax | No comments »
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By Philip - Friday, June 13th, 2008
For those interested and involved in TUPE, there is a very important decision on TUPE reported today.
In the case there was a service provision changeover. However instead of awarding the contract to one company , the contract went to two separate companies - A and B. The previous contractor we can call C.
A and B were not awarded an equal amount of the contract. A was awarded 71% and B was awarded 29%. To keep things simple, let’s say C (the transferor) employs 10 people on the contract that is transferring .
The question for the Tribunal (and I am distilling this) was:
1. Does A have 7 employees transfer and B 3 employees transfer, consistent with the terms of the contract?
2. Does A have 10 employees transfer and B none, consistent with Botzen?
The answer is 2. A was landed with 10 employees, despite only winning 71% of the contract.
This case will be useful if you are an employer awarded a small percentage of a large contract. You can argue that the party winning the large share of the contract should assume responsibility for all employees in scope.
Posted in TUPE | No comments »
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By Jenny - Thursday, June 12th, 2008
A recent agreement within the EU Employment Council will allow the UK to continue permitting employees to opt-out of the 48-hour maximum average working week. A provision in our Working Time Regulations means that people have the right to work longer than 48 hours a week should they choose to do so.
In the UK the 48 hour week maximum working week imposed may be disapplied by agreement in writing (often referred to as an ‘opt-out’ between the employer and the employee). Employers should therefore ensure that employees who could be working more than 48 hours a week on a regular basis are asked to sign an ‘opt-out’. Without this employers could be in breach of the Working Time Regulations and therefore open to tribunal claims.
Posted in Working Time Regs | No comments »
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By Liam - Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
Both the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 contain provisions requiring employers to consult collectively about redundancies and measures envisaged as a consequence of the transfer respectively.
The penalty for failing to comply with such a requirement is up to 13 weeks’ pay for each employee within the description of employees in respect of which the protective award is made (the description of employees could be all employees being made redundant or all employees of a particular grade or classification - this will vary on a case by case basis).
The 13 weeks’ pay is not subject to the same statutory cap as is used for redundancy pay. This means that the maximum protective award is 13 x an uncapped week’s pay x number of employees who fall within the description in respect of which the award was made.
This could clearly be considerably more than capped week’s pay (currently £330) x 13 weeks, particularly for high earners and therefore is a useful fact to know when assessing potential liability in a mass redundancy/mass TUPE exercise.
Posted in Redundancy, TUPE | No comments »
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