Managing employees/workers
This case concerns three employees who felt that they had the right to be accompanied at investigation meetings.
The Supreme Court has affirmed that, where a party asserts that a written term does not reflect the reality of the agreement, tribunals and courts may look outside the terms to determine the true nature of the agreement.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that a worker absent for the whole leave year, but who does not submit a request for the annual leave before the leave year ends, does not forfeit his or her entitlement to paid annual leave.
In a decision that may appear harsh, the employment tribunal penalised the employer almost £3,000 for failing to follow the statutory right to request flexible working procedure to the letter, even though the managing director may have been distracted because he was dealing with possible redundancies at the same time.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that an employer's compliance with the TUPE legislation to preserve existing contractual terms and conditions that results in a disparity in pay can amount to a genuine material factor that may provide a defence to an equal pay claim.
This case is an example of an employer that needed to deal with the extremely difficult issue of having a disciplinary matter pending against a member of staff on maternity leave.
The Supreme Court has held that it was not a breach of a teaching assistant's human rights to refuse him the right to be accompanied by a lawyer at a disciplinary hearing to address an allegation of acting inappropriately towards a pupil.
In X v Mid Sussex Citizens’ Advice Bureau and others [2011] EWCA Civ 28 CA, the Court of Appeal held that a volunteer at a Citizens’ Advice Bureau was not an employee for the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and could not therefore claim disability discrimination when she was asked to stop her voluntary work.
The Supreme Court has referred to the European Court of Justice the question of whether or not the TUPE Regulations should be given a "dynamic" interpretation, in the context of a dispute over a transferee's failure to honour the terms of a pay increase made under a collective agreement that was incorporated into the contracts of employment before the transfer.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that it is the transferee, rather than the Secretary of State, that is liable to pay the unfair dismissal basic award and notice of an employee who is dismissed after a "pre-pack" administration and TUPE transfer of the business as a going concern.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to managing employees/workers.