York - 01904 716000
Wetherby - 01937 583210
Malton - 01653 692247

call us

Search
York 01904 716000
Wetherby 01937 583210
Malton 01653 692247
News

York - 01904 716000

Wetherby - 01937 583210

Malton - 01653 692247

Employment News Blog 2015

15 September 2015 Written by Ware & Kay Solicitors Category: Employment advice

National Minimum Wage Increases from 1st October 2015

The national minimum wage hourly rate increases from 1 October are:

  • Adults: £6.50 to £6.70
  • Young workers: £3.79 to £3.87
  • Apprentices: £2.73 to £3.30.

 

The majority of workers aged 16 and over qualify to receive the national minimum wage.

Exclusions from the right include au pairs, family members in the family business and voluntary workers.

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

NEW: Quarterly tribunal statistics to June 2015 published

The Ministry of Justice has published statistics in relation to all types of tribunal claims (including employment tribunals) for April to June 2015. The figures continue to show a decrease in the number of claims as compared to last year, including claims received, cases disposed of, and the caseload outstanding. There were 5,400 employment tribunal issue fees requested in this period, of which 68% were paid outright, 21% were awarded either a full or partial issue fee remission, and the remaining 11% of claims were not taken further. For more recent tribunal statistics

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:


NEW: Data on zero-hours contracts published by the Office of National Statistics

The latest estimate of the number of people who are employed on zero-hours contracts in their main employment is 744,000 for April to June 2015, representing 2.4% of people in employment. This is the finding of the Labour Force Survey and is higher than for the same period in 2014, in which 624,000 people identified themselves as being employed on a zero-hours contract. Of those working on zero-hours contracts, 54% were women, 34% were aged 16 to 24 and 6% aged 65 and over.

The Office of National Statistics survey of businesses indicates that there are around 1.5 million contracts that do not guarantee a minimum number of hours. This is a 6% rise in the use of zero-hour contracts by UK businesses since 2014.

Source: ONS: Employee contracts that do not guarantee a minimum number of hours: 2015 update (2 September 2015).

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

When is a reasonable adjustment not a reasonable adjustment?

First Bus Plc's policy of merely requesting, but not requiring, passengers to move out of wheelchair spaces to make way for wheelchair users may have breached the Equality Act 2010. The Supreme Court has granted an application by a wheelchair user to appeal the Court of Appeal of England and Wales' decision in a case considering what reasonable adjustments a bus company is required to make in order to accommodate disabled wheelchair users.

Source: https://www.supremecourt.uk/news/permission-to-appeal-decision-8-july-2015.html

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

New Trade Union Bill published

The government has published the Trade Union Bill 2015-2016 which aims to reform various aspects of the law on industrial action and trade union obligations and activities. The proposed reforms include increasing ballot thresholds, extending the notice of industrial action required to be given to employers and a new expiry date for action to be taken following a ballot. The Bill would also introduce more stringent requirements for unions to supervise picketing.

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

No more sick pay?

Workers may be required to save for unemployment or illness

TribunalClaimsSlide

David Cameron is to look at requiring workers to pay into saving accounts to fund their own sick pay or unemployment benefit. Iain Duncan Smith has previously suggested that "we need to support the kind of products that allow people through their lives to dip in and out when they need the money for sickness or care or unemployment".

Source: David Cameron open to idea of workers saving up to fund own sick pay, guardian.com, 15 July 2015.

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

Working time

"Working time" can include time spent travelling to and from home for workers with no fixed workplace.

The Advocate General has given his opinion in a case before the European Court of Justice that for peripatetic workers (those who are not assigned to a fixed place of work), the time spent travelling from their home to their first assignment, and from their last assignment back to their home, constitutes "working time" for the purposes of the Working Time Directive (2003/88/EC).

The reference to the ECJ came from a Spanish court, after a group of workers who drove to customers throughout Spain installing security systems complained that their employer was breaching the working time rules by not treating their first and last journeys of the day as working time. In the Advocate General's opinion, this time satisfied the three criteria of time where the worker is at work, at the employer's disposal, and carrying out his activity or duties, and should therefore be regarded as working time rather than a rest break. (Federación de Servicios Privados del sindicato Comisiones Obreras v Tyco Integrated Security SL and another C-266/14.)

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

Employers named & shamed for failing to pay the minimum wage

70 employers who have failed to pay the national minimum wage (NMW) have been named and shamed by the government. Collectively owing their employees over £157,000 in underpaid wages, they have been charged more than £70,000 in financial penalties. East Midlands Crossroads (Nottingham), which owes 184 employees £37,592.56, and Delcom Systems Ltd, which owes £11,731.52 to a single employee are among those named.

Source: BIS: Government names and shames largest ever number of national minimum wage offenders (24 February 2015).

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

Zero hours contracts for 1.8 million workers

A survey of 5,000 businesses conducted by the Office for National Statistics in August 2014 found that 1.8 million workers are employed on "zero hours contracts". These are contracts which do not guarantee a minimum number of hours.

A further survey by the ONS revealed a 19% increase in the number of workers employed on zero hours contracts, in their main employment, during the quarter October to December 2014 compared to the same quarter in 2013.

People on zero-hours contracts are more likely to be women, in full-time education or in young (ages 16-24) or older (ages 65+) age groups. By industry sector, food and accommodation businesses make up the largest proportion with 53% of companies using them, whilst Education has more than one in four businesses using them.

Zero hours contracts are seen as controversial in the media because of their apparent abuse by some employers. The government launched a consultation in December 2013 focusing on the use of exclusivity clauses and the lack of transparency in zero hours arrangements. Possible solutions identified by the consultation include banning exclusivity clauses and creating government guidance or an employer-led code of practice. The ban is not yet in force.

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

Harmonising terms and conditions after a TUPE transfer

Is it age discrimination?

TribunalClaimsSlide

'Yes' said the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT).

In Braithwaite and others v HCL Insurance BPO Services Ltd (5th February 2015) the EAT found that a requirement to sign up to new contractual terms and conditions in order to cut staff costs following a TUPE transfer disadvantaged older workers, as they, as older workers, had built up greater entitlements by virtue of their longer service. However, on the facts of this case it could be objectively justified because there were no less discriminatory ways of achieving the employer's legitimate aim of reducing staff costs.

Employers will need to bear in mind that changing terms and conditions can constitute indirect age discrimination.

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

Employment Appeal Tribunal

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has determined that where an employer decides an employee's appeal against dismissal should succeed, the contract of employment is automatically revived. There is no need for a separate reinstatement decision or communication of that decision. See http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2014/0304_14_1012.html for a summary of the decision in Salmon v Castlebeck.

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

John Lewis and Waitrose implement changes to employees' pay

...in in light of Bear Scotland

HolidaySlide

The John Lewis Partnership has announced that from February this year, it will follow the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in the case of Bear Scotland Ltd v Fulton and others with the effect that non-guaranteed overtime will be included in its employees' statutory holiday pay. It is estimated that the extra cost of changes to the calculation of employees' pay will be around £12 million a year, less than 1 per cent of the total annual payroll costs. The company will also make a one-off back payment to employees who took holiday after 1 November 2014 and may have been underpaid.

The government has announced proposals for legislation to cap retrospective holiday pay claims at two years, following the decision in Bear Scotland.

Source: John Lewis and Waitrose to give staff millions after holiday pay ruling, cipd.co.uk, 19 January 2015.

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

New legislation relating to holiday pay...

...and other wages claims comes into force on 8th January 2015.

TribunalClaimsSlide

In a judgment handed down by the Employment Appeal Tribunal on 4th November 2014 in the case of Bear Scotland v Fulton (and conjoined cases) the Working Time Directive requires holiday pay to be calculated so as to include overtime, including non-guaranteed overtime, as part of normal remuneration, and that it is possible for the Working Time Regulations 1998 to be construed accordingly. However, this only applies to the four weeks' annual leave derived from the WTD, not the additional 1.6 weeks provide by regulation 13A of the WTR 1998.

The EAT also found that it was not open to employees to claim that they had suffered a series of deductions (for the purposes of the unlawful deductions from wages provisions of the ERA 1996) by linking each occasion on which a period of holiday was underpaid. Where a period of more than three months had elapsed between each deduction, this had the effect of breaking the series.

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

Holiday Pay - Cap on Backdated Claims

EmploymentCorporateSlide

From 1 July 2015 it will no longer be possible for employees to bring unlawful deductions claims in respect of sums which have been outstanding (including back holiday pay) for over 2 years as at the date the claim is made, either in the tribunal or civil courts, under the Deduction from Wages (Limitation) Regulations 2014. This is subject to some limited exceptions such as claims for Statutory Maternity Pay which remain unaffected. The Regulations also explicitly state that there is no contractual right to holiday pay.

More info: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/3322/made

If you have any questions please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

Employment Tribunal Fees - Judicial Review

It is being reported that Unison's judicial review application, which challenged the legality of employment tribunal fees, was dismissed this morning by the High Court (without reasons being given).

To find out more please contact our Employment Law Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

Restrictive covenants

 

TribunalClaimsSlide

Important legal update for employers: in the case of Re-use Collections Limited v Sendall & May Glass Recycling Ltd, it was decided that an employer could not enforce the restrictive covenants set out in the amended Contract of Employment as the employee had not received a monetary benefit for agreeing the new terms. Where a variation of employment is contemplated, some consideration is therefore advisable. Continued employment in itself is not necessarily adequate consideration.

To find out more please contact our Employment Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

 

Are passengers on buses required to vacate wheelchair spaces?

Are passengers on buses required to vacate wheelchair spaces to make way for wheelchair users? The Court of Appeal has decided not, in the recent case of FirstGroup PLC v Doug Paulley. The Court determined that the obligation under the Equality Act to make reasonable adjustments could not extend to this. It would be impractical, cause disproportionate disruption to other passengers who, after boarding a bus, may be obliged to subsequently leave, and it would also be unworkable.

To find out more please contact our Employment Solicitor Gillian Reid on:

 

Employment Advice articles

Filter Articles
Contact us