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  • Date:
    1 June 1999
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Continuity of employment: Motive behind "gap" in employment irrelevant for continuity purposes

    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.

  • Date:
    15 February 1999
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Continuity of employment: Continuity not preserved during two-week breaks between contracts

    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.

  • Date:
    1 April 1998
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Continuity of employment: No contracting out of continuity provisions via ACAS settlement

    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.

  • Date:
    1 December 1997
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Continuity of employment: Retrospective arrangement cannot preserve continuity

    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.

  • Date:
    15 December 1992
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Continuity of employment: Continuity unaffected by sick employee taking other work

    An employee who left his job because of ill health and took lighter work elsewhere before returning to his original employer, did not lose his continuity of employment, holds the EAT in Donnelly v Kelvin International Services. This is because the statutory provisions which preserve continuity during periods of sickness or injury relate to the employee's capability to perform his or her original job.

  • Date:
    10 May 1991
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Continuous employment: Break between seasonal contracts not a "temporary cessation"

    In Berwick Salmon Fisheries Co Ltd v Rutherford and others the EAT holds that periods fishermen spent out of work between seasonal contracts of employment could not be described as "relatively short". The breaks were not therefore "temporary cessations of work" within the statutory definition and continuity of employment was broken.

  • Date:
    1 December 1987
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Continuity of employment: No aggregation of hours permissible

    In Lewis v Surrey County Council, the House of Lords rules that where an employee is employed under separate but concurrent part-time contracts, she is not entitled to aggregate the number of weekly hours worked under each contract in order to establish that a week "counts" towards a period of employment for the purposes of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978.

  • Date:
    8 March 1983
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Continuity of employment: Interval between fixed-term contracts

    One of the grounds on which an interval between two contracts of employment does not break continuity is that the employee is absent from work due to a temporary cessation of work. In a decision that will benefit many teachers and temporary workers, the House of Lords holds in Ford v Warwickshire County Council that it is not relevant that the interval was anticipated and lies between two fixed term contracts. The test in all cases is whether the gap is short In relation to the duration of the two contracts.

  • Date:
    31 December 1981
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Ross v Delrosa Caterers Ltd

    In Ross v Delrosa Caterers Ltd [1981] ICR 393 EAT, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that, although continuity of employment is broken where a redundancy payment has been paid to an employee and the contract of employment is renewed or the employee re-engaged under a new contract, this is the case only if the redundancy payment is a statutory redundancy payment.

  • Date:
    1 March 1981
    Type:
    Employment law cases

    Rowan v Machinery Installations (South Wales) Ltd

    In Rowan v Machinery Installations (South Wales) Ltd [1981] IRLR 122 EAT, the EAT held that the Industrial Tribunal had erred in finding that the appellant's period of continuous employment had been broken when his contract of employment had been terminated by the respondents and he was paid an amount calculated in accordance with the statutory redundancy payment provisions, in circumstances in which there was no liability on the respondents to make a redundancy payment.