Managing employees/workers
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.
In Stubbs v Chief Constable Lincolnshire Police and others a Nottingham industrial tribunal (Chair: D R Sneath) holds Lincolnshire's chief constable liable for the unlawful acts of a male police officer who sexually harassed a female colleague in public houses after work.
In Collison v British Broadcasting Corporation, the EAT holds that an ACAS-conciliated settlement did not operate to allow the parties to contract out of continuity of employment for the purposes of claims such as unfair dismissal and redundancy pay brought under the Employment Rights Act 1996.
In Morris v Walsh Western UK Ltd, the EAT holds that an employer's ex post facto agreement to treat the period of an employee's absence from work as a period of unpaid leave was insufficient to preserve his continuity of employment.
In (1) Wilson and others v St Helens Borough Council (2) Meade and another v British Fuels Ltd, the Court of Appeal considers the position under the Transfer of Undertakings Regulations where employees' contracts of employment are terminated on a relevant transfer and they accept employment with the transferee on less favourable terms and conditions.
In McMeechan v Secretary of State for Employment, the Court of Appeal holds that a temporary worker on the books of an employment agency may have the status of employee of the agency in respect of each assignment actually worked, notwithstanding that the same worker may not be entitled to employee status under his or her general terms of engagement.
The EC Business Transfers Directive does not apply to a change in the contractor providing contracted-out services, unless there is a concomitant transfer of significant tangible or intangible assets from the existing contractor to the new contractor, or the new contractor takes over a major part of the workforce (in terms of the numbers and skills of employees) assigned to the performance of the contract by its predecessor, rules the European Court of Justice in Süzen v Zehnacker Gebäudereinigung GmbH Krankenhausservice and another.
HR and legal information and guidance relating to managing employees/workers.