End of employment

New and updated

• Date:

  22 September 2011

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Offer of re-engagement does not need to include incentive previously offered to secure agreement to variation of contract

  The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that, where an employer offers an incentive to employees to secure agreement to variation of their contracts, it is reasonable not to offer that benefit as part of an offer of re-engagement following dismissals for failure to agree. 

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Employer bound by six-month notice period after employee signed variation to contract

  The employer in this case wanted to make a blanket variation to its workforce's contractual notice periods. However, the employer got itself into the difficult position of varying the claimant's notice period, while the rest of the workforce refused the change.

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Age discrimination against teenager dismissed at 18 to avoid national minimum wage increase

  In this case, the industrial tribunal in Northern Ireland described a small employer's decision to dismiss a young worker to avoid having to increase her pay from £4.00 to the national minimum wage rate of £4.92, when she reached the age of 18, as "callous".

• Date:

  19 September 2011

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Age discrimination: German collective agreement requiring pilots to retire at 60

  The European Court of Justice has held that a rule in a collective agreement applicable to the crew of the German airline Deutsche Lufthansa prohibiting pilots from flying after the age of 60 is discriminatory on the ground of age. 

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Age discrimination: local authority employee's redundancy timed to avoid pension costs

  In this decision, the employment tribunal was critical of a local authority that failed to keep an employee at risk of redundancy in employment for six more months during a transitional period. The decision had been taken to avoid a pension payout and constituted direct age discrimination and unfair dismissal.

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Employee fairly dismissed for single swear word directed at manager

  The employer in this case was entitled to take a stern view of an isolated incident in which an employee lost her cool and swore at a team leader.

• Type:

  FAQs

  Is an employee who resigns while on maternity leave entitled to notice pay?

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Case round-up

  Claire Benson is managing associate and Caroline Jacobs and Chris McAvoy are associates at Addleshaw Goddard LLP. They round up the latest rulings.

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Employee who commented on Facebook that she worked "in a nursery" was unfairly dismissed

  An increasing number of tribunal cases involve employees making work-related comments on Facebook. This case shows that derogatory comments will by no means always justify dismissal.

• Date:

  24 August 2011

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Resignation or dismissal: employment tribunal decisions

  This article summarises the main issues and outcomes in five employment tribunal cases where the key issue was whether the employee resigned or was dismissed.