Samantha Cameron’s popular fashion brand Cefinn, has recently been reported to minimum wage officials following the publication of an advertisement for an unpaid internship. The advertisement stated that Cefinn was searching for a PR and marketing intern to carry out market research, sample management and production assistance over a 3 month period. Although the advertisement…
You may recall my post back in July of this year, detailing the case of Christian doctor David Mackereth, and his claims that his contract had been terminated due to his refusal to use transgender pronouns. By way of a very brief summary, when starting a new role as a contract worker at the DWP…
Intelligent Hand Dryers, a Company based in Sheffield specialising in, well, Hand Dryers, has recently introduced a ban on its employees using single use plastic including plastic water bottles, sandwich wrappers with plastic ‘windows’, and disposable coffee cups with plastic linings, in order to reduce its environmental impact.
The owner of the Company, Andrew Cameron, has made the above a disciplinary offence and stated that if employees receive three warnings and continue to ignore this policy, they could be dismissed. The environmental benefits, if more businesses were to impose such policies, are obvious however is it fair to effectively make this a condition of employment? Surely the choice of an employee to buy a sandwich from a well-known supermarket at lunch time does not hinder their ability to perform their role?
The Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR’s) state that workers are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ leave per year with part-time workers being entitled to a pro-rated amount of this figure. For example, an employee working full time would be entitled to 28 days per year (5 days x 5.6 = 28) whereas a part-time employee working say 3 days per week, would be entitled to 16.8 days per year (3 days x 5.6 = 16.8 days).
The above is clearly a straightforward calculation, however the situation becomes more complicated for workers who do not have ‘normal working hours’. Under the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA) if an employee works irregular hours, their holiday pay should be calculated using an average of their pay over the last 12 weeks. On the basis that the 5.6 weeks leave entitlement amounts to 12.07% of a worker’s hours (12.07% reached by dividing 5.6 by 46.4 (total number of weeks in a year less 5.6 weeks holiday), employers have generally calculated holiday pay as 12.07% of pay for each hour worked (i.e. the assumption was that the calculation for both the amount of holidays and holiday pay, would be the same). The recent case of The Harpur Trust v Brazel however, shows that the same approach does not work for both…
A Christian doctor who was training to be a medical assessor for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) had his contract terminated due to his refusal to use ‘transgender pronouns’, he has claimed to the Birmingham Employment Tribunal.
Dr David Mackereth, who had 26 years’ experience as an NHS doctor, was asked to refer to patients in accordance with their chosen gender identification. However, he responded that he would have a problem with this as he believed that gender was defined by biology and genetics, telling the Tribunal that he would not refer to “any six-foot tall bearded man” as “madam”.
He states that he was suspended as a disability claims assessor in June 2018, and his contract subsequently terminated.
The Court of Appeal has this week ruled that employers must consider any ‘regular’ voluntary overtime when calculating holiday pay, in addition to ‘non-guaranteed’ overtime, upholding the earlier decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT).
In Flowers and others v East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (2017) the Claimants, all employed by the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (in a variety of roles) initially brought their claim to the Bury St Edmunds Employment Tribunal alleging that unlawful deductions had been made from their holiday pay.
They stated that the calculation of their holiday pay should account for overtime in two categories – non-guaranteed overtime, and voluntary overtime. The difference between the two in this case is that non-guaranteed overtime occurs when the employee is carrying out a task which must be completed after the end of the shift (for example dealing with an emergency services call for an ambulance), whereas voluntary overtime would be classed as additional shifts which the Claimant can choose to volunteer for (there was no requirement or expectation for them to do so however).
Does a worker’s holiday entitlement continue to accrue into successive years if they do not take their annual leave because their employer will not pay them for these holidays? The Advocate General at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has answered ‘yes’ to this question, in a non-binding opinion. In the case of King v…
In the case of MPT Group Ltd v Peel and others [2017] EWHC 1222 (Ch), the High Court was asked to decide whether employees were under a duty to disclose their intention to compete to their employer. The facts of the case were that Mr Peel and Mr Birtwistle were employed by MPT Group Ltd…
Following on from my colleague Martin Malone’s article back in March, takeaway delivery Company Deliveroo have now removed the clause in their self-employed courier’s contracts (or ‘supplier agreements’), which stated that the couriers would not be permitted to challenge their self-employed status at an Employment Tribunal. New contracts (which are now just four pages long)…
In the recent case of Government Legal Services v Brookes UKEAT/0302/16, the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) upheld the decision of the Employment Tribunal (ET) that requiring a job applicant with Asperger’s to take a multiple-choice test as part of the recruitment process, amounted to indirect discrimination. Background The facts of the case were that the Government Legal…