REUTERS |
July 24, 2017

Employment Tribunal Costs: The Increased Relevance of the CPR?

The Employment Tribunal Rules (ET Rules) and the CPR

The amount of a costs order in the employment tribunal (ET) can be made subject to detailed assessment, to be carried out (either by the ET or by a county court) in accordance with the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (CPR) (rule 78, ET Rules).  It was traditionally understood that this application of the CPR to ET procedure was limited to the assessment of the level of costs, as opposed to the separate question of whether costs should be ordered at all. As reflected in the CPR, “costs follow the event” in the civil courts.  In contrast, the ET has a limited costs jurisdiction, which depends on the existence of improper or unreasonable conduct and the exercise of discretion in the presence of such conduct as to whether to award costs. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Lucy Nicholson
July 18, 2017

Taylor Review: a solid platform for the future world of work

The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices has unsurprisingly elicited a range of views. Some believe it is a missed opportunity for radical change, while others bemoan a worker-friendly approach that will stifle much-needed innovation in a post-Brexit economy. There are also many who think it has struck the right note. My own perspective lies somewhere in the middle. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Faisal Mahmood
July 17, 2017

Multiple equal pay claims and tribunal fees: new game, new rules?

It’s commonly observed that equal pay legislation has been in place for over 40 years but a significant gender pay gap stubbornly persists. One of the likely reasons for this is that equal value claims are dauntingly complex, long-running and expensive. While claimants in most employment tribunal litigation can expect a result comfortably inside 12 months, equal pay litigation can go on (and therefore have to be continuously funded) for years. Some of the high-profile claims against Asda, for example, started in 2008 and there is no end in sight, even at employment tribunal level, after which subsequent escalating appeals seem inevitable. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Eddie Keogh
July 6, 2017

Litigating multiple equal pay claims

For the employment lawyer, HR leader and finance director, large multiple equal pay claims are the perfect storm: legally complex, divisive for the workforce and potentially enormously expensive. They’re also rare; most employment lawyers will go through their entire career without encountering one.

All of which means that it’s often a sweaty-palms moment when the call comes in from a worried HR director: “A thousand equal pay claims just arrived. What do I do?” Continue reading →

REUTERS | Ilya Naymushin
June 29, 2017

Employment highlights: June 2017

Queen’s speech and Brexit. The Queen’s Speech on 19 June 2017 included the announcement of a new Immigration Bill to deal with the immigration status of EEA Nationals and the forthcoming repeal of EU freedom of movement law. A new Data Protection Bill was also announced to implement the EU General Data Protection Regulation and give individuals greater rights over their data, including the right to be forgotten.

The government has since published its plan for EU citizens residing in the UK after Brexit. However, it has also been reported that a third of migrant workers are considering leaving the UK in the next five years, and that UK farming is already facing a migrant worker shortfall.

Working Time and Time Off. The Advocate General has given an opinion that a worker is entitled to be paid in lieu on termination for any periods of annual leave that have accrued during employment, which the worker has been discouraged from taking because it would have been unpaid. If followed by the ECJ, this could have major implications for misclassified gig economy workers.

Continue reading →

REUTERS |
June 19, 2017

Advocate General fails Discrimination 101

The First Commandment of discrimination law is that each person has a right to be judged on the basis of his or her individual attributes. Stereotyping is anathema. Young women, on average, may have higher labour turnover than young men, but that does not mean that it is right to assume that every young woman will be more prone to leave their job than every young man. And in Great Britain, ever since the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, any employer who makes a recruitment decision on the basis of such a generalisation would be acting unlawfully. The same prohibition applies to stereotypes relating to the other protected characteristics. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Yuya Shino
June 12, 2017

Lapsed disciplinary warnings and dismissal: a new approach

Everyone knows that it is always impermissible to take a lapsed warning into account when deciding whether to dismiss an employee. According to both the Court of Appeal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal, “everyone” is wrong.

As set out in Stratford v Auto Trail VR Ltd UKEAT/0116/16, the position is actually far more nuanced than might be imagined. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Ina Fassbender
June 7, 2017

Artificial intelligence may not be so bright

In an era when emotional intelligence is recognised as valuable, and where employers are anxious to create effective processes for identifying the best recruits, it is ironic that so many rely on automation to exclude vast swathes of potential applicants. Cost is a key factor, as major employers try to limit the number of human interactions to manageable levels. But the effect of mass recruitment campaigns is that they may exclude the very candidates employers need because their testing platform either fails to identify the key skills required, or is too much of a blunt instrument. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Chris Helgren
May 26, 2017

Employment highlights: May 2017

General Election 2017. We published a new practice note examining the manifestos from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties and their implications for employment law. The General Election will be held on 8 June 2017. Practical Law’s General Election 2017 landing page contains materials summarising the implications of the manifestos, policy statements and pledges made by the main political parties of interest to lawyers and their clients in a number of key areas.

Discrimination. The EAT has upheld the decision of an employment tribunal that a job  applicant with Asperger’s required to undertake a multiple choice test suffered indirect discrimination when the employer  refused to make an adjustment to the format of the test.

Employment Appeal Tribunal. The EAT refused to exercise its discretion to extend the time limit where an appeal was submitted an hour late. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Mike Blake
May 18, 2017

Can contract law handle the gig economy?

Employment status is one of those fractally complex areas of law. Initially, it seems as if it should be relatively simple. But, as you look more closely, it starts to look more complicated. And if you continue to examine it, it becomes more difficult still. It’s not clear (to me at least) that the nearly five decades of caselaw since Ready Mixed Concrete v Minister of Pensions and National Insurance have made anything much clearer.

Continue reading →