Until recently, the stance under English law in relation to retirement was that after a certain age, employers could force employees out of a job and into ‘retirement’. This stance is slowly changing, with a default retirement age no longer being the norm. The default retirement age was previously 65 years old. The new law [...]
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Direct and indirect discrimination – what’s the difference ?
Equal Opportunities Law states that all individuals should be employed, paid and promoted solely because of the skills and abilities they possess and how they do their job and when an employee or applicant is treated less favourably than another employee or applicant by the employer this will be classed as discrimination. In cases like [...]
Posted in Discrimination Tagged direct discrimination, Discrimination, indirect discrimination Comments closed
Recrutment process and employment law
In order for an employer to correctly advertise a job vacancy, whether to fill an existing post or create a new one, the employer needs to be sufficiently clear what they are asking from the role, what the role requires, and fairly and accurately advertise the vacancy, being aware also of the need to ensure [...]
Redundancy – consultation and the different types required
When an employer is considering making members of staff redundant, whether it’s just a single employee or a hundred or more employees, there is a legal obligation to follow the correct redundancy consultation process and failure to do so will automatically make any redundancies unfair. Individual redundancies If the employer intends to make between 1-19 [...]
Posted in Dismissal, Employee Rights, Employer law, Policies & procedures Comments closed
Employment Tribunals – the basics
What is an Employment Tribunal and what are the main points to know ? Employment tribunals deal with the vast majority of legal disputes arising from employment law. They are part of the judicial system but are separately organised from the main civil courts (The County Courts and the Supreme Court). There are a number [...]
Unfair Redundancy
The Employment Rights Act 1996 was introduced partly as a means of protecting workers from being unfairly chosen for redundancy or unfairly sacked and when an employee is unfairly dismissed from their job they are then well within their rights to take further action against their employer as long as the employee has the required [...]
Posted in Dismissal, Employee Rights, Employer law Tagged dismissals, redundancy, redundancy selection, unfair redundancy Comments closed
Compromise Agreements
Compromise Agreements are a common feature of employment law and in particular the termination of employment. Such agreements are the only method by which an employer can ringfence potential future claims and liabilities to the employee and from the employee’s perspective, such agreements will usually result in the employee receiving an extra sum of money, [...]
Posted in Compromise Agreements, Employee Rights, Employer law Tagged compromise agreements, negotaiting compromise agreements, redundancy, termination of employment Comments closed
How Should Unauthorised Absences Be Dealt With?
There are many different kinds of unauthorised absences, with a wide variety of reasons for these absences. It is therefore important to first distinguish the nature of the unauthorised absence. The absence could be a one-off occurrence, or it could manifest itself into a persistent pattern (with one type of variant being known as ‘Monday [...]
Access to an employee’s medical records
Access to Medical Records The Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 is legislation which enables individuals and employers to access medical reports for insurance and employment purposes. There are several reasons why an employer may require access to an individual’s medical reports such as: To ensure that the individual applying for the position fits the [...]
Posted in Employee Rights, Employer law Tagged disability, medical records access to employee medical records, sickness absence Comments closed
Rolled up holiday pay
Rolled up holiday pay is the pay that an employee receives which consists of their normal wages, but includes the employee’s ‘holiday pay’ for untaken holidays. This holiday pay was set by the Working Times Regulations in 1998, guaranteeing employees four weeks paid holiday per year. The legality of rolled up holiday pay has been [...]
Posted in Employee Rights, Employer law, Policies & procedures Tagged EU law, holiday pay, rolled up holiday pay Comments closed
