PLEASE NOTE
We will be in Portugal from the 30th August to 14th September. I will check my emails each evening. I will have my mobile for urgent calls, emails and texts.
Under 18 Year Olds
Another reminder that under 18’s must not work more than a 40 hour - 5 day week. The working day should not exceed 8 hours and there should be 2 consecutive days off per week.
SSP Entitlement
To be eligible for SSP employees have to earn £112 a week from April 2015.
If they are sick for 4 or more days and earn under this figure you download an SSP1 form and give it to them to claim from the DSS.
Zero hours Contracts and SSP
Employees on zero hours contracts still get holiday entitlement.
I can also confirm that if they work regularly and earn over £112 per week they are equally entitled to SSP.
Recovery of Training Costs
In my Contract we have a facility for you to recover training costs ie the fees, travel and accommodation. You cannot normally recover the actual wages paid to an employee whilst they are carrying out the training.
Non EU Students Working in the UK
You might have missed this but from 1st August NON EU students will no longer be able to work 10 hours a week whilst studying in the UK.
Tribunal Fees
The number of cases reaching Employment Tribunals have plummeted by around 70% since fees were introduced. But this isn’t the only reason.
When workers contact ACAS to begin the Tribunal process there is an optional route of conciliation through ACAS it is called early conciliation and can last up to a month. Around 60% of cases that went to early conciliation didn’t end up not going to Tribunal
Failing to Declare Tips
A Manager at a cafe in Glasgow lost his claim for unfair dismissal after hearing that he had an agreement he wouldn’t declare his tips
This is an important decision as the Tribunal ruled his contract had been
"tainted by illegality". This effectively meant the employee lost their employment rights!!i.e he was party to this illegal practice so lost his employment rights
Claiming Costs At Employment Tribunal
It isn’t very common for costs to be awarded against a claimant.
Having lost her claim of discrimination at Tribunal and an award of costs was made against her because she knew the claim to be false! She was ordered to pay £10,000 to the respondent which represented just under one third of the costs it had incurred in defending the claim of discrimination
Ms X complained that the judge had taken into account an amount that she may or may not receive in a divorce settlement and her debts were actually far greater than initially stated.
The EAT dismissed the appeal. Although reference was made to the possibility of a payment on divorce being available to discharge a costs award, it was not a material consideration in the decision to award costs which was principally based on the claimant's age and the likelihood that she would earn sufficient in the rest of her working life to pay such an award.
Self-Employed-Advice from Northern Ireland
The rules aren’t different in Northern Ireland but I felt the following advice was particularly helpful and would interest clients
“If you’re self-employed, you do not have a contract of employment with an employer. You’re more likely to be contracted to provide services over a certain period of time for a fee and be in business in your own right. You’ll also pay your own tax and National Insurance Contributions.
You don't have employment rights as such if you're self-employed as you are your own boss and can therefore decide how much to charge for your work and how much holiday to give yourself.
You do have some legal protection. You must not be discriminated against and you're entitled to a safe and healthy working environment on your client's premises.”
TRAVEL TO WORK—IS IT WORKING TIME?
Many employees work in the community visiting customers at home.Does the time that workers spend travelling from home to their first customer, and from the last customer back to their homes, count as working time?
A European case might well have implications for the UK
For workers who don’t have a fixed base travelling is an integral part of the job, the routes and destinations are determined by the employer who could at any point modify the instruction; and travelling is integral part of the work
Shared Parental Leave
We have had our first client with an employee taking shared parental leave.
Here is an example of how it might work for you
A mother and her partner are both eligible for SPL.
The mother goes on maternity leave 2 weeks before her baby is born. She gives notice to her employer that she’ll take 16 weeks of maternity leave.
Since the mother has given binding notice (which she couldn’t change), her partner can start SPL as soon as the baby has been born (as long as her partner has given at least 8 weeks’ notice to their employer).But of course the total of52 weeks absence still remains.
It’s potentially quite a problem
“Sacked for Eating a Cake”
These headlines always attract attention, when it’s a high profile employer it’s even more the case.
One of the issues of being taken to Employment Tribunal is that they are public and, if you are unluckyand the press decide to attend, it might form the basis of a juicy story about your business in the local papers.
In this case, in short, the employee worked at Harrod’s and claimed he
took a bite of a Cake after a customer sent it back, complaining it was too dry. Harrods saidhe ate the cake, which was misconduct and he was dismissed.
He took his claim to Tribunal making a substantial claim for compensation for discrimination under a number of headings.
However the Tribunal dismissed his claim for alleged race, age and sexdiscrimination and he lost his claim. I won’t go into the details but none of his claims of discrimination had been raised during the disciplinary process or at the appeal or at any time during his employment.
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