Feature Articles

6 April is one of the two regular dates each year on which new employment laws come into force. As foreseen - last week, some important changes came into force regarding Statutory Payment Rates, Unfair Dismissal Qualifying Period, Tribunal Procedure, and Compromise Agreements.

In almost all areas of discrimination law, someone who claims that they have been unlawfully discriminated against will have to demonstrate ‘less favourable treatment’ by identifying a comparator...

Some of the Most Significant Employment Law Advances of 2010 have been...

Even though an employer may have good intentions this is not a defence...

In this update, we comment on a number of changes that impacted businesses in 2009...

As regular readers of our updates will be aware, there has recently been a tide of court judgments upholding the rights of long-term absentees to receive holiday pay under the Working Time Regulations, whether during or on termination of employment. Employers will therefore welcome a new decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) which provides that such employees may only be entitled to receive paid annual leave if they actually apply for holidays whilst they remain off sick. 

Employment law reform has recently become a hot topic for the mainstream political media in a way that perhaps we have not seen since the 1970s. The reforms to unfair dismissal law and tribunal procedure proposed by the coalition last week are set to have a significant impact on employment rights for employers and employees alike.

It is a well known principle of law that discrimination cannot be justified on the basis of cost alone. Intuitively, this makes sense, as otherwise it would be open to employers to simply decide to discriminate against certain groups within their workforce on the basis that doing so was cheaper than providing their workforce with equal opportunities...

It has been announced that the late May public holiday will not take place at the end of May this year, but will be moved to Monday 4 June 2012 instead. It has also been confirmed that the additional public holiday for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee will take place the following day, Tuesday 5 June 2012. 

When an employee’s role is declared redundant, it does not automatically follow that the employment relationship will be terminated...