According to aggrieved former Channel 4 Racing pundit John McCririck, he is entitled to damages for age discrimination of £3m since he was not retained by new producers IMG Sports Media when they took over TV horse racing coverage from Highflyer Productions on 1 January 2013. He says he is being represented on a no…
Can a Christian care worker be required to work on Sundays? In February 2012 I reported the employment tribunal decision in the case of Celestine Mba v Merton Council. The decision went against Ms Mba and she was clearly aghast at what she regarded as intolerance against her own faith in what she considered to…
It was reported on 9 January that 11 staff in the Department for Work and Pensions have been sacked for using Facebook or Twitter at work. They are among 116 DWP employees to have faced disciplinary proceedings concerning their use of social media since January 2009. Of the remainder 34 received a final written warning,…
There has been a notable increase in the number of employers (particularly those in the public sector for some reason) checking their employees’ social media activity. Personal Facebook pages appear to have come in for considerable scrutiny and comments which might be construed as critical or otherwise potentially damaging to the employer have resulted in…
Welton v Deluxe Retail (t/a Madhouse) is a case concerning continuity of employment for the purposes of calculating qualifying service for statutory employment rights. Under these provisions, any week when the employee’s relations with his or her employer are “governed by a contract of employment” will count towards continuous employment. The case came about after…
Two recent cases have considered the effect of compromise agreements in TUPE cases where claims are made against more than one employer. In Optimum Group Services Plc v Muir the Employment Appeal Tribunal looked at the situation in which an employee with a claim arising out of a TUPE transfer reached a settlement with one…
The Court of Appeal has considered the correct interpretation of provisions of the Fixed-Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 which exclude work under certain training and work experience schemes from the calculation of the period of successive fixed terms. The Regulations provide that once an employee has worked for four years on…
Liddell’s Coaches v Cook is another case involving a contract to bus children from one place to another (see also Redfearn -v- UK). In this case the legal issue concerned the exclusion of service provision changes “other than in connection with a single specific event or task of short-term duration” from TUPE. When East Ayrshire…
In Redfearn v UK, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled on whether an employee who was an elected BNP councillor was entitled to protection from dismissal on the grounds of his political associations. Arthur Redfearn was disabled and drove a bus for disabled people. He was rated as "first class employee" by…