In This Issue:
February 2007
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Welcome |
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More holidays |
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Lavatorial discrimination |
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Minimum wage fine |
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Agency workers |
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Does size really matter? |
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And some snippets... |
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Featured Links:
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Welcome
This month we see the Government clamping down on employers
who fail to pay the national minimum wage and holiday
entitlement, while the Employment Appeal Tribunal has made
several interesting rulings.
A private member’s Bill seeks to offer fresh protection to
agency workers and -in case you hadn’t noticed - it’s now
officially the European Year of Equal Opportunities.
Malcolm Davies
Andersons Solicitors
More holidays
The minimum holiday entitlement is increasing from 20 days
to 28 days a year under the Working Time Regulations 1998, a
move the Department of Trade and Industry estimates will
affect 6 million workers.
This means those employers who currently include the eight
UK bank holidays in their staff’s 20-day annual leave will
now have to add them on to give a total of 28 days. The
change will be introduced in two stages, increasing from 20
to 24 days on 1 October 2007 and from 24 to 28 on 1 October
2008.
A second round of public consultation on the changes
continues until 13 April — full details, together with a
range of consultation documents and holiday allowance
calculator, on the DTI website at
http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/holidays/index.html
Lavatorial discrimination
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has overturned a finding of
sex discrimination in Kettle Produce v Ward, a case
involving a male manager who entered women’s toilets and
shouted at a woman on her break he believed to be ‘skiving’.
The employment tribunal had held that a man entering women’s
toilets is itself an act of sex discrimination, but the EAT
disagreed, saying the correct question to ask was: suppose
the respondent had been a woman with the same robust
management style. Would she have treated a man sharing the
claimant’s sensitivities in the same way?
Minimum wage fine
Employers who pay workers below the national minimum wage
and fail to respond to an enforcement notice will be
consistently fined, the Department of Trade and Industry has
announced.
Fines amounting to approximately £207 a week for each
full-time employee will be levied if minimum wage arrears
have not been paid within seven days of receipt of an
enforcement notice. Full details in a PDF available from the
DTI website —
http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file36381.pdf
Agency workers
The Temporary and Agency Workers
(Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Bill has been
introduced in the House of Commons by Labour MP Paul
Farrelly.
The Bill — which needs the support of 100 MPs to progress
beyond its second reading on 2 March — aims to:
- prohibit direct discrimination
against agency workers unless objectively justified
- oblige end users to inform all agency workers of ‘any
vacancies in his organisation’ – this is not limited to
suitable vacancies
- allow for regulations providing for joint liability
between agency and end user
Does size really matter?
The physical size of a tribunal claim form was the subject
of unusual argument in Grant v In 2 Focus, where the
Employment Appeal Tribunal heard it had shrunk slightly
while being faxed. The tribunal’s administrative staff then
decided it was to be on ‘the prescribed form’, and rejected
it – leading to the employee missing the three month
deadline for lodging the claim.
The judge decided that a reduction in size following faxing
was not a reason to reject a form, particularly given that
lodging by fax is provided as a legitimate means of
presentation. One would otherwise reach a ‘ludicrous
result’, he said.
And some snippets...
Flexible working
More than half the working population — 52 per cent of men
and 48 per cent of women — want to work more flexibly,
according to a report from the Equal Opportunities
Commission. Researchers compiling Working Outside the Box
estimate that 6.5 million people could use their skills more
fully if flexible working was available, with this ‘skills
drain’ affecting almost as many men as women and more
non-parents than parents. The report shows that some
employers are responding, with flexitime and home-working
particularly popular, while new technology is increasingly
being used to find more innovative ways of organising work.
Alcohol at work
The Health and Safety Executive has produced an employers'
guide to alcohol at work, both online and as a downloadable
PDF, focusing on topics including the effects on
individuals, the legal position, providing information and
the implications of screening. The online version of Don’t
Mix It! is at
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg240.pdf
Modified grievance procedure
The requirement in the modified grievance procedure that the
employee set out in writing ‘the grievance and the basis for
it’ meant a grievance letter simply identifying an equal pay
complaint did not comply with the procedure, the Employment
Appeal Tribunal has ruled in City of Bradford v Pratt. This
was so even though a failure to identify the comparator
category and nature of the alleged pay disparity meant the
letter would comply with the standard procedure. As a result
the claimant was barred from access to the employment
tribunal on a technicality, a conclusion the judge said gave
him ‘no great satisfaction’.
Missed deadlines
Fresh guidance on presenting an unfair dismissal claim when
the three-month limit is missed due to the fault of the
Citizens’ Advice Bureau has come from the Employment Appeal
Tribunal in Royal Bank of Scotland v Theobald. The judge
stated that tribunals should, as a rule, be more willing to
grant an extension of time where a mistake is made by a CAB
adviser than a qualified solicitor.
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