In redundancy situations employers sometimes offer “suitable alternative employment” as a means of avoiding redundancy. Suitability depends on how similar the work is, the terms of the job being offered, the skills, abilities and circumstances of the person being offered the job and the pay, status, hours and location. If a reasonable offer is unreasonably…
The latest review of the minimum wage has attracted more attention than usual, perhaps because we are not that far away from the next general election. First, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) announced that the maximum penalty for failure to pay minimum wage is to increase to 100% of unpaid wages, up…
Fixed term contracts have become very popular in the public sector, not least as the result of the need for strict budgeting and frequent funding reviews. This is nowhere more so than in the academic world. University of Stirling v University & College Union deals with whether fixed term workers whose contracts are not being…
In McCarthy v Jaguar Cars Ltd the Employment Appeal Tribunal considered, and upheld, an Employment Tribunal decision that where a disabled person had been selected for redundancy although the selection criterion relating to attendance amounted to a discriminatory provision, criterion or practice, the employer had made a reasonable adjustment by scoring the employee on the…
Anne Sharp, the chief executive of ACAS, recently identified zero hours as one of three key issues for this year (the others are resolving disputes earlier and pay) and in doing so welcomed the launch of a consultation on this pattern of employment. As I have pointed out in an earlier blog post there is…
A couple of cases this month illustrate the crucial importance of paying more than lip service to fair procedure. West London Mental Health v Chhabra illustrates the dangers of allowing non decision makers to meddle in disciplinary proceedings. In this case, concerns were raised about a consultant psychiatrist, including about possible breaches of confidentiality after…
How much difference will the new changes to TUPE (The Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 2014) actually make? For TUPE aficionados the changes are no doubt very interesting but, bearing in mind that I have already commented on the changes in general terms I will confine my observations to…