At 24th January 2006 there were no less than 29 Bills with employment law relevance either already introduced or at an advanced stage of preparation, including one in the Scottish Parliament. These include, importantly, the Equality Bill and the Work and Families Bill both of which have had their 3rd readings in the House of Commons within the last 10 days. Notes on all 29 Bills and prospective Bills are included on our website, together with an archive of lapsed employment law related Bills since 2002.
Thumbnail summaries and/or or headnotes of all cases reported in the ICR and IRLR law reports since end 1999 are available on our website. All cases reported in ICR 2006 part 1 and in IRLR 2006 vol 35 no 1 are now noted/summarised and short commentary is provided. For most new cases there are direct links to free versions of the full judgments on the internet. This is in addition to linked thumbnail summaries and/or headnotes of more than 1,500 other employment cases, new and old.
The annual inflation-linked increase in limits on the amounts which can be awarded by employment tribunals come into force in respect of dismissals on or after 1st February 2006. Maximum compensatory award on unfair dismissal rises from £56,800 to £58,400 and maximum amount of a week's pay for basic award calculations risea from £280 to £290. It is worth noting that under the Work and Families Bill, the government also intends to take power to make a one-off additional, "inflation-busting", increase to these and other compensation limits.
For more information go to Compensation / 2006 limit increases and/or Bills before Parliament / Work and Families Bill on our website.
The Government has today (24th January 2006) published its long awaited Green Paper "A new deal for welfare: Empowering people to work" . The plan is to achieve an 80 percent employment rate for people of working age. The paper proposes a reform of incapacity benefit and of housing benefit.
Two important items of interest here, one general and the other technical.
The combined effect of the Court of Appeal's judgment in the well known Durant case and of the Information Commissioner's revised guidance following that case has been to make it easier for employers legitimately to reject some "section 7 Subject Access Requests" for personal data, thus saving time and money. The House of Lords has refused Mr Durant's petition for leave to appeal but it is understood that he is considering a further appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
New regulations coming into effect on 6th April 2006 will give increased rights to employees who leave a pension scheme early without entitlement to a pension.
Other draft regulations to be phased in, also from 6th April 2006, will ensure that larger employers (150 staff, reducing to 50 by 2008) must consult employees before making many changes to pension scheme. The draft regulations also give a right to paid time off work for "consulted representatives", with supporting "protection from detriment" and "automatic unfair dismissal" rights. These new rules will tie in with the more general Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004, which of course also only affect larger employers.
Replacement of the present fire certificate scheme, intended to be abolished on 1st April 2006, has been postponed - no final date has yet been set for its replacement by more general duties on employers to ensure that reasonable precautions against fire risks are in place.
The ECJ Advocate General recommended in December 2005 that the European Court of Justice should rule that it is contrary to the Social Security Equal Treatment Directive for a Member State to refuse to grant a retirement pension before the age of 65 to a post-operative male-to-female transsexual where that person would have been entitled to a pension at the age of 60 had she been regarded as a woman as a matter of national law (see Richards v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, ECJ)
For more information go to Sex discrimination / transsexuals & homosexuals on our website.
In order to establish most employmet law rights an individual must count either as a "worker" or as an "employee". This will only be possible if there is a degree of "mutual obligation" between the putative employer and the individual. There have been several recent cases in which in-depth consideration has been given to exactly what this means in practice.
There are strict time limits for employees to bring most employment law claims (for example 3 months from the "effective date of termination" for unfair dismissal). Tribunals have discretion in appropriate cases to allow an extension of time but are generally quite strict about ensuring that time limits are kept. A case in December 2005 in which time expired over a weekend has established that if a claim is posted by first class post not later than a Thursday it can, for this purpose, be deemed to have arrived at the tribunal office on the Saturday even if in fact the Royal Mail did not deliver it until the Monday.
It is well known that the overall effect of a number of improper acts or omissions by an employer can cumulatively amount to a fundamental breach of the implied contractual term of trust and confidence and thus justify an affected employee resigning and claiming constructive dismissal. In January 2006 the Employment Appeal Tribunal made it quite clear that for this to happen it is not necessary for any of the individual incidents which make up the course of conduct, or indeed "the last straw" itself, to be a breach of contract.