The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that output VAT must be paid on retail vouchers given to staff under salary sacrifice schemes, which allow employees to elect to take certain benefits in lieu of salary as part of their remuneration package....
Under TUPE, employees` terms are protected when they are transferred to the private sector. In addition, the 2003 voluntary code of practice on workforce matters in local authority service contracts guarantees that anyone recruited to work in the outsourced business will be on "no less favourable terms" than those workers who were previously in the public sector. The same principles apply to most other public sector service contracts as a result of a further code of practice published in 2005....
The Central London Employment Tribunal is trialing a new system whereby an ACAS Conciliator is present at the tribunal office to assist parties in conducting settlement discussions....
On 22 July 2010, the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) launched a consultation paper, "Skills for Sustainable Growth". The consultation outlines seeks views on proposals for addressing the significant issue of an ever increasing unskilled workforce. Consultation closes on 14 October 2010....
The current default retirement age (DRA) of 65 has been under the spotlight since the introduction of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations back in 2006 and has not been without its critics. Today marks the start of a period of consultation by the Government into its proposals to phase out the DRA, which include plans for a six-month transitional period....
Under TUPE, all collective agreements relating to the transferring employees transfer to the transferee where they are bound by the terms in force at the date of transfer. Any subsequent changes or new collective agreements will not ordinarily bind a transferee if they are not a party to it....
The question of whether it is unlawful age discrimination to cap contractual redundancy payments in order to prevent employees from receiving a windfall (i.e. a redundancy payment together with the ability to draw a pension) was put into the spotlight by the EAT in the recent case of Kraft Foods Ltd v Hastie....
Ever since the House of Lords ruled in HM Revenue & Customs v Stringer and others last year that employees could claim accrued but untaken annual leave going back a number of years, as part of a series of unauthorised deductions, if they had been unable to take the leave owing to sickness absence, employers have been looking for a way to mitigate the effects of that decision....
Compensation for personal loss of reputation is generally excluded from unfair dismissal compensation. However, following the much publicised case of Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA (BCCI) an exception arose which gave rise to the principle that is termed as ‘Stigma Damages`....
Most employers adopt standard redundancy scoring criteria which include objective criteria such as levels of sickness absence. Again, most employers know that to avoid discriminating against disabled employees any periods of sickness that relate to a disability should be discounted from the disabled employee`s score. This would be a reasonable adjustment for employers to make....
When an employee transfers to another employer under TUPE, his terms and conditions are preserved. This may cause problems if the employer inherits men and women doing the same job but on different rates of pay. There is nothing the new employer can do to remedy the inequality - or is there?...
The Liberal Democrats` transport minister, Norman Baker, has called on employers to allow employees to work one day a fortnight from home as part of the Government`s drive to cut transport congestion and create a low carbon economy....
Further to our previous blog about the Government`s new Your Freedom website which allows the public to suggest which laws it would like to see abolished or created, Buddy has reviewed some of the suggestions posted relating to Employment Legislation....
According to recent statistics published by Grazia Magazine, 1 in 3 women now earn more than their partners and are considered the main breadwinner in their family. A further 19% earn the same salary as their partner....
A Firefighter has received £80,000 in compensation after he was dismissed following complaints he raised that reclining chairs installed in his fire station were causing him severe back pain. The chairs were brought in to replace beds in Greater Manchester`s fire stations in 2006....
The Government is apparently planning to encourage employers to allow staff to work more flexibly in order to ease the transport congestion and held employees achieve a better work-life belance....
In case you have been asleep (or cannot keep up with when the government is going to implement the Act!) - the Equality Act is the next key legislative change in Employment law - it begins to become law in October 2010. As a result of the Act, employers may need to review and change their policies and practices on equal opportunities....
A survey for Aon Consulting has revealed that one in five UK workers feigned an illness the last time they took a day off work sick. The UK was the worst performer in the survey compared to the rest of Europe!...
According to the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) the collective deficit of UK final-salary pension schemes widened in June. Not surprising given the extremely challenging times we are in. The downward trend is nothing new either and over the last decade we have seen scores of FTSE 100 employers closing their final salary schemes, initially to new recruits, and more lately for existing members....
We are often asked to advise on matters where parties claim that they had agreed something either over the telephone or in person but there is no written record of that agreement. In the recent case of Pebble v Costa, the Court of Appeal stated that where there is no evidence of an agreement in writing, it was open to a judge to decide what had been agreed based only on what appeared likely in the circumstances and how the witnesses appeared in court....