The Supreme Court has ruled that equal pay claims which would have been out of time in an employment tribunal (generally after 6 months), may be brought in the court (for up to 6 years). This case opens the possibility of claims that could not have been brought in the Employment Tribunal being brought in court. However, claims in court have far higher risk for employees, including the real possibility of having to pay the employer’s legal costs if the employee loses. (Birmingham City Council v Abdulla and others)
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The Chancellor announced proposals for a new type of employee ownership arrangement, under which employees would give up some of their employment rights in exchange for shares in their employer. The government has now issued a consultation paper on these proposals, in which a new employment status is proposed: “employee owners”. The deadline for responses is 8 November 2012.
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When an employer is making large scale redundancies it needs to calculate how many redundancies might be made at each “establishment”. For workforces with different sites or with large numbers of mobile workers this can raise difficult issues. In this case the EAT considered whether an educational authority needed to aggregate all its schools and treat them as one “establishment” or whether each school was a separate “establishment” . This could have major practical implications about whether or not collective consultation is required. The EAT decided that the term “establishment” in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992
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The High Court has decided that an employee was bound by the terms of a new contract of employment provided to him after he was promoted, but which he had not signed and returned to his employer. The new contract contained post termination restrictive covenants. It was decided that the employee’s acceptance of the new contract could be implied by the fact that he applied for private medical insurance cover that was only available to him under the new contract. The employee was therefore bound by the terms of the new contract from the date he applied for the medical
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The Court of Appeal has decided that that a former equity partner of a limited liability partnership (LLP) was not a worker and therefore was not eligible to bring a whistleblowing claim against the LLP. The effect of section 4(4) of the Limited Liability Partnership Act 2000 is that an LLP member who would have been a partner under a general partnership if it had not been registered as an LLP, cannot be an employee or a worker. The Court of Appeal’s decision is significant for LLPs and LLP members alike. It confirms the previously untested proposition: that LLP members
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There has been a great deal of press coverage recently about changes in employment law. Some of the changes are merely proposals and some have come into force. The exact status of proposals can be quite confusing and therefore we thought this would be a good point at which to summarise recent and proposed changes. Recap: What’s happened so far in 2012 Qualifying Service Period for Unfair Dismissal Probably the most significant change in employment law that has already come into force this year is the increase to the qualifying service period for unfair dismissal. An employee who started working
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