Taking the law into your own hands is always dodgy. For Simon Cremer, who runs a flooring company in Witham, Essex, taking a thief to the law (in the shape of the local police station) turned out to be expensive as well. It may have seemed a good idea at the time but Mr Cremer…
As you have probably read in the mainstream press the European Court has ruled that different insurance premiums for women and men constitute sex discrimination and that they are not compatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (see EC Press Release of 1st March 2011: Sex Discrimination in Insurance Contracts). The European Court ruled…
We have commented on many occasions that HMRC and employment tribunals can reach equally valid but contrary views that a person can be both employed and self-employed at the same time. A recent case re-emphasises that just because the taxman regards a person as being an employee it does not follow that that is the…
Alexander Wright, a junior geologist working for a company called Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings Ltd, was killed in September 2008 when a pit or trench from which he was taking trial soil samples collapsed on top of him. The company was prosecuted under the Corporate Manslaughter & Corporate Homicide Act 2007, the first prosecution of a…
A leading article in the Times of 23 February 2011 was headed “The TUPE regulations are a barrier to open services that needs to be removed”. The Times was making the point that the TUPE regulations make it practically impossible for local councils to achieve efficiency savings by outsourcing functions but there are also serious…
Regular readers will know that BA cabin crew have kept the courts and tribunals very busy in the last couple of years. In the latest case involving them the Court of Appeal has ruled that cabin crew, based in Hong Kong but flying to and training in London, worked partly at an establishment in Great…
I wrote about the anomaly in the draft Regulations last month when I pointed out that it appeared that the new Regulations appeared to exclude the option to give notice to over 65s before the default age was abolished. The Government announced in January that it was not going to back down on proposals to…
Employed new fathers who have completed 26 weeks continuous employment with their employer already have the right to two weeks’ paternity leave with statutory paternity pay. New, additional, paternity leave rights come into force in relation to children whose expected week of birth (or matching for adoption) begins on or after 3 April 2011 (the…
The “Protection of Freedoms Bill” is a Government Bill. It had its first reading on 11 February and is likely to be law by the end of 2011. It covers a variety of matters, including placing restrictions on wheel clamping of cars, use of CCTV and removal of restrictions on times for marriage and civil…
Here is an outline list of eight employment law related changes (and non-changes) announced by the Government due in the near future. The last three are of sufficient general importance to merit separate consideration – provided by separate posts (see links below). The outline list is as follows: 1. Time off to Train The Government has now announced that this right…