Employment Law

England may seem to be the land of plenty for Premier League players with massive salaries, mansions, swimming pools and Bentleys to boot, but as the last season ended and with a new one starting in a few months time, life as a footballer is not all it’s cracked up to be for many professionals […]

A recent ruling in the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that a “self-employed” lap dancer was in actual fact an employee and was entitled to claim unfair dismissal. Miss Quashie was a lap dancer who worked at Stringfellows and (as is custom within this industry) was self-employed.  Stringfellows was not obliged to provide her with […]

The Government wants to promote mediation for the resolution of employment disputes, bypassing Employment Tribunals and lawyers. You may be surprised that we would say “Amen, to that”, but a visit to the Employment Tribunal, just like a visit to any other court, is generally an expensive and unsettling experience, win, lose or draw. For […]

Last week in a Queen’s Bench Division case the Court emphasised the important criteria to consider in work related stress cases. Whilst the main issue was that Claimant was unable to establish a causal link between the alleged amount of work, stress and her medical condition (which included Chronic Fatigue Syndrome CFS), the court took the […]

The legislative weather forecast for 2012 augers well for a vintage harvest! Successive governments, including the current coalition government, have promised to ease the burden of changes in employment law by minimising the number of changes and by making legislative changes only twice a year. However, Vince Cable’s latest speech on the subject, and the […]

In a recent case the Leeds Employment Tribunal have considered a subject that has been of increasing concern to employers in recent years: alleged misuse of social media by employees. Two caveats to this case are that: a) it very much turns on its very specific facts; and b) it is a first instance decision […]

Amidst the chaos and confusion of Manchester City’s 2-0 defeat by Bayern Munich on Wednesday, the claims and counterclaims as to what happened “on the bench” still reverberate around the incident. As a consequence, City have suspended Carlos Tevez after it was alleged he refused to appear as a substitute. Tevez, 27, who said the […]

Most people have heard of “TUPE”.  And many are familiar with “pre-packs” – where a company in financial trouble negotiates a sale of its business, goes into administration, and then completes the deal. Are the days of pre-packs numbered in the light of a recent decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT)? An historic criticism […]

Many employees are unaware that they have a statutory right to take reasonable time off work without pay in cases of emergency. Sections 57A and 57B of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA) permit employees to take reasonable unpaid leave to look after dependants in certain prescribed circumstances, such as the employee’s dependant is ill, […]

From 1 October 2011, a new set of Regulations will provide equal treatment for agency workers in respect of their fundamental working conditions, in comparison with permanent employees. Once the agency worker completes a 12-week qualifying period, he or she will be on a par with a comparator (the permanent employee) as if they had […]

Whilst most employers will be aware that the default retirement age of 65 is to be abolished in April 2011 and that they will no longer be able to compulsorily retire employees, there is a general lack of understanding as to what an employer’s obligations are in respect of older employees in the absence of […]

You may have read in the news recently that the Coalition Government is proposing to make it more difficult for employees to issue proceedings in the Employment Tribunal. This is partly in response to the increasing number of Tribunal claims and the spiralling cost to employers of defending those claims, but the Government has also […]