REUTERS |
June 9, 2016

Leaving religion at the door of the workplace in the name of neutrality

The non-renewal of a French hospital social worker’s contract for her refusal to stop wearing a headscarf was found to be a legitimate interference with her Article 9 rights in the ECtHR case of Ebrahimian v France. The basis of the decision, that it was necessary to protect the neutrality of public services, also has something in common with AG Kokott’s Opinion in Achbita (although Achbita concerned the Framework Directive, not the Convention). In Achbita, the private employer was justified in dismissing a receptionist for failing to remove her headscarf on the basis that it was seeking to uphold its corporate policy of ideological neutrality. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Pillar Lee
June 2, 2016

Senior Managers Regime: key points in the employment lifecycle

Greater accountability and personal responsibility are the watchwords of the new Senior Managers Regime (SMR) which came into force on 7 March 2016 for banks, building societies and large investment firms. The regime is due to be expanded to apply to a wider range of authorised firms in 2018. Firms caught in its net then will be keen to learn from the experience of the initial roll-out.

Compliance with the SMR raises a number of employment law issues. In this post, I thought it would be helpful to pick out three tricky areas which arise at different stages of the employment lifecycle. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Navesh Chitrakar
May 26, 2016

Employment highlights: May 2016

Three major Bills affecting employment law received Royal Assent this month, becoming the Trade Union Act 2016, the Enterprise Act 2016 and the Immigration Act 2016, the last of which creates new immigration offences from 12 July 2016. Compared to last year, the Queen’s speech contained little for employment lawyers, besides the recycled promise of a British Bill of Rights, which was considered recently by the House of Lords EU Committee.

It was a bad month for interpreters in the Court of Appeal. Local interpreters working for the British Army in Afghanistan were not covered by the Equality Act 2010 because they did not satisfy the territorial jurisdiction test in Lawson v Serco. And the lack of an umbrella contract was a relevant factor in deciding that court interpreters working for the MoJ were not in “employment” under the EqA 2010. Continue reading →

REUTERS | David W Cerny
May 16, 2016

Contract law and terminating employment

What is it about contract law, that when a case like Geys comes long, people are left wondering why a seemingly fundamental point has either never been challenged before or else has lain dormant for so long? Is it possible that the label ‘freedom of contract’ acts as a kind of dead weight, deterring employment lawyers from making novel arguments, whereas, for example, discrimination law lends itself to and positively invites ingenious and creative argument (the results of which can be seen in judgments like Chez, for example, where the end point is exotically far from the starting point)? Continue reading →

REUTERS | Navesh Chitrakar
May 4, 2016

DSAR – minimising the pain of disclosure

Over the last year or two there has been an increasing trend for data subject access requests (DSARs) made under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) being used as a way of obtaining pre-action disclosure. Indeed, there have been two fairly recent cases that have considered this way of using DSARs, the Taylor Wessing case and the Community Safety Development case. Given the outcome of these cases as originally decided, and regardless of the outcome of any appeals, it is clear that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will take some convincing to dismiss a DSAR on the basis of an “abuse of process” argument (especially in light of the Community Safety Development case). Continue reading →

REUTERS | Gleb Granich
April 19, 2016

Advising employees about pension rights: how far should you go?

How much information or advice should an employer give its employees in connection with their pension rights? A recent determination of the Pensions Ombudsman has given rise to renewed questions about an employer’s obligations in this tricky area. These questions are particularly topical given changes to the pensions tax regime which limit the amount of pensions tax relief available for high earners from 2016/17. Continue reading →