Managing employees/workers
In Carmichael and another v National Power plc, the House of Lords holds that two women who accepted a company's written offer of employment as tour guides "on a casual as required basis", and then worked as guides on invitation when they were available and chose to work, were not employees under contracts of employment.
In Rama v South West Trains, the High Court confirms that the test to determine safety representatives' entitlement to paid leave to attend health and safety training is not limited to training that is necessary to enable representatives to fulfil their functions.
In determining the question of continuity of employment for statutory employment protection purposes, employment tribunals need only examine each relevant week (that is, a week ending on a Saturday) to ascertain whether or not during any part of it an employee was working under a contract of employment for the employer against whom a claim is brought, holds the EAT in Sweeney v J & S Henderson (Concessions) Ltd.
In R v Attorney General for Northern Ireland ex parte Burns [1999] IRLR 315 NIHCQB, Northern Ireland High Court, Queen's Bench Division held that that the failure of the Government to transpose the Working Time Directive in time was an actionable breach of Community law.
In Secretary of State for Trade and Industry v Bottrill, the Court of Appeal upholds an employment tribunal's finding that a controlling shareholder of a company could also be an employee of that company for the purposes of the employment protection legislation.
In making the Working Time Regulations, Parliament intended that all contracts of employment must be read so as to provide that an employee should work no more than an average of 48 hours per week during any 17-week reference period, holds the High Court in Barber and others v RJB Mining (UK) Ltd.
Employees employed by the same employer for total periods of between four and six years under a succession of temporary contracts of less than two years' duration, were not regarded as continuing in employment by custom or arrangement during regular two-week breaks between those contracts, holds the EAT in Booth and others v United States of America.
In Francisco HernandezVidal SA v Gomez Perez and others [1999] IRLR 132 ECJ, the European Court of Justice held that, for the purposes of EC Business Transfers Directive 77/187, an organised grouping of wage earners who are specifically and permanently assigned to a common task may, in the absence of other factors of production, amount to an economic entity.
There was no transfer to which the Transfer of Undertakings Regulations applied when an industrial and provident society took over the management of local authority care homes by, in effect, acquiring the shares of the company that ran the homes and employed the staff who worked in them, holds the EAT in Brookes and others v Borough Care Services and CLS Care Services Ltd.
Employees who are dismissed by the transferor of an undertaking, and then re-engaged by the transferee on different but agreed terms, are not entitled to retain the benefit of their previous terms of employment, holds the House of Lords in Wilson and others v St Helens Borough Council and Baxendale and Meade v British Fuels Ltd.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to managing employees/workers.