Work organisation
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has stressed that workers are afforded protection under the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/93) only if they are supplied by a temporary work agency to work "temporarily" for the end user.
Colin Makin, Krishna Santra, Linda Quinn and Sandra Martins are senior associates and Melissa Powys-Rodrigues is an associate at Colman Coyle Solicitors. They round up the latest rulings.
This tribunal decision provides another reminder to employers after Unison v London Borough of Barnet and another ET/3302128/2012 of the information on agency workers that they are required to produce during redundancy consultation.
The European Court of Justice has confirmed that the holiday pay of a worker on a zero hours contract placed on short-time working can be calculated on a pro rata basis.
In Kücük v Land Nordrhein-Westfalen [2012] IRLR 697 ECJ, the ECJ held that an employer's use of 13 successive fixed-term contracts over a period of 11 years was not inherently in breach of the Fixed-term Workers Directive, but that the issue of objective justification had to be assessed by the national court on the particular facts of the case.
The European Court of Justice has suggested that it may be possible for employers to justify engaging an individual for more than four years on a succession of fixed-term contracts as he or she moves around to cover work for different absent employees.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that a worker who had not opted out of the 48-hour working week did not suffer detrimental treatment when his employer refused him the opportunity to work voluntary overtime on a rest day.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that the employment tribunal was wrong to decide that employers have a positive duty to correct employees or ex-employees in relation to misapprehensions that they have about time limits for bringing claims.
In Manchester College v Cocliff EAT/0035/10, the EAT held that an employment tribunal erred when it decided that there had been less favourable treatment on grounds of fixed-term status because it had found that any difference in terms was not objectively justifiable. Tribunals should first consider whether or not any less favourable treatment is on grounds of fixed-term status. Only if the answer is yes should they move on to consider the defence of objective justification.
An employment tribunal has found that an individual employed on three consecutive fixed-term contracts over almost a decade is a permanent employee, in a case that has significance for employers in sectors that regularly employ staff for a fixed term, such as teaching, IT and construction.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to work organisation.