There are now 18 Bills with employment law relevance either already introduced or at an advanced stage of preparation, including one in the Scottish Parliament. Notes on all of them are included in the emplaw program, together with an archive of lapsed employment law related Bills since 2002. Bills of current interest are:
1 - Armed Forces Bill; 2- Company Law Reform Bill; 3 - Compensation Bill; 4 - Corporate Manslaughter Bill; 5 - Employment Tribunals (Representation and Assistance in Discrimination Proceedings) Bill; 6 - Equality Bill; 7 - European Union Bill; 8 - Fraud Bill; 9 - Health Improvement and Protection Bill; 10 - Identity Cards Bill; 11 - Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill; 12 - Incapacity Benefit Bill; 13 - Liverpool City Council (Prohibtion of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill; 14 - London Local Authorities (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill; 15 - Parental Rights Bill; 16 - Partnerships Bill; 17 - Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Bill 18 - Unfair Contract Terms Bill.
A feature of emplaw.co.uk is the provision of thumbnail summaries and/or or headnotes of all cases reported in the ICR and IRLR law reports since end 1999.
All cases reported in ICR 2005 pt 6 and in IRLR 2005 no 7 are now noted/summarised in the current emplaw program and short commentary is provided. For most there are direct links to free versions of the full judgments, usually on the Court Service, EAT or BAILII websites. This is in addition to linked thumbnail summaries and/or headnotes of more than 1,500 other employment cases, new and old.
Three recent cases, one in the Court of Appeal and two in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, have made it more likely than before that a business which uses staff supplied by an agency could be deemed to be their "employer" for employment law purposes and might be joined in any tribunal proceedings any of them might bring (Bunce v Postworth Ltd t-a Skyblue CA, May 2005; Royal National Lifeboat Institution v Bushaway and Astbury v Gist Ltd, both in the EAT in April 2005). It will sometimes be possible for steps to be taken to avoid this result so any business employing agency workers which assumes they are self-employed or are employees of the supplying agency would be well advised to consider the position with its advisers.
In the light of a May 2005 ruling by the Court of Appeal, employers (and their advisers) who are settling disputes or potential disputes by way of compromise agreement should take extra care to ensure that the agreement will stand up. A claim which is not described in the agreement, preferably both factually and by reference to the statutory provision or common law basis under which it might be made, will not be blocked. On the other hand, there are less stringent requirements to ensure that an ACAS promoted "full and final" settlement will be binding.
Three items of note this month:
Under new proposals, a person caught employing an immigrant who does not have the correct permissions for working in Great Britain will be liable to a fixed penalty, probably £2,000 per illegal employee. There is no exception for employers of domestic staff, such as Philippino mothers' helps. There will be a possible two-year prison sentence and an unlimited fine for any employer found knowingly to use or exploit illegal workers.
On 20th June 2005 the Department of Health launched a full consultation on the proposals to ban smoking in enclosed public places, including the workplace. A commencement date of mid-winter 2007 has been suggested (but may be unlikely, for obvious reasons, unless perhaps the DoH knows more about climate change than everyone else).
An employment tribunal has no power to make a joint and several order for compensation in unfair dismissal cases. However the position is different in discrimination cases. In particular a tribunal has power under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 to order joint and several compensation. Thus if an employer is vicariously liable for sexual harassment committed by one of his employees an employment tribunal has the power to make an order enabling the claimant to recover the full amount of any award from either the employer or the employeer.
There is to be a further six month delay in introduction of the new general TUPE regulations. The new pension parts came into force on 6th April 2005 but the start date of the new general regulations has been postponed from 1st October 2005 to 6th April 2006. As consultation originally started in September 2001, a few extra months delay is unlikely to cause severe problems - and employers and their advisers will no doubt welcome extra time to get to grips with the subtleties of the proposed new regulations.
The EAT has ruled that compensation for injury to feelings or other non-financial loss cannot be awarded under the Equal Pay Act 1970 even though it can be awarded under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.