Employment law moves more quickly than any other legal area I know. Last week I presented three separate employment law updates and by the end of the week one of the cases I mentioned had been overturned by the Court of Appeal.
The case is Sarkar v West London Mental Health NHS Trust and if you were on one of the courses you may remember that that was the case where the employer originally dealt with bullying allegations by invoking their informal ‘fair blame procedure’ but then decided that following further allegations and the employee refusing to accept the outcome of the procedure they moved to the formal procedure and dismissed him. The EAT reversed the tribunal’s finding of unfair dismissal and held that the employer was entitled to act in the way that it did.
Continue reading ‘Update on an Employment Law Update’
The trade union Unite has been in the news over the last few days in the context of the forthcoming strike at British Airways which has in turn led to a lot of noise being made about the way in which the union funds the Labour party.
While slightly off my usual beaten track of employment law, the rules governing union funds were something I wrote about quite a lot when I was a writer on IDS Brief and so I thought it might be worth summarizing the rules on political donations from trade unions. It turns out that union funding is about the most well regulated and democratic kind of political donation you could wish for.
Continue reading ‘Trade unions funding the labour party’
Workplace bullying seems to be in the news this week – can’t think why.
As an employment lawyer I have a problem with bullying. Let me rephrase that. I find it difficult to talk about bullying because there is no legal concept of bullying as such. An employee can’t put ‘workplace bullying’ on an employment tribunal claim form and expect to get anywhere.Proving that you have been bullied at work – whatever that means – does not in itself mean that you have any legal claims at all.
Continue reading ‘The thing about workplace bullying’
I think I first remember hearing the phrase ‘its political correctness gone mad’ in a spitting image sketch in the 1980s. I can’t remember what the sketch was about – but the Daily Mail was mentioned.
As an employment lawyer who spends a lot of time training managers on discrimination issues, I know that ‘PCGM’ features strongly in many of their initial concerns about getting to grips with discrimination law and I hope that the training I give helps to dispel some of the myths that have grown up around what, I insist, is a very common sense area of the law.
Continue reading ‘Political Correctness Gone Mad!’
The Lords Committee Stage of the Equality Bill has been making rapid progress and barring something dramatic happening it is clear that the Bill does now have time to make it onto the statute books. A number of amendments have been made – perhaps most notably a measure making it unlawful for employers to ask employees about their health prior to offering them a job unless the employer can show that the question is necessary to ensure safety, make adjustments or ensure that the employee is capable of performing key tasks.
Continue reading ‘Equality Bill Bombing Through The Lords’
As someone planning to fly with BA on 23rd December I’m more than usually keen to know the basis on which BA is planning to challenge the industrial action in the courts – see the news story here.
Continue reading ‘Legal Challenge to the BA strike’
The Equality Bill completed its Report Stage and Third Reading in the House of Commons today. It is now off to the House of Lords.
I haven’t been able to check all of the amendments that were made but the proceedings of the Bill published so far show the Government proposing two new clauses – which I presume were adopted.
Continue reading ‘Equality Bill Clears the Commons’
The Report Stage of the Equality Bill has been listed for 2nd December. As yet we don’t seem to have any proposed Government amendments which is a bit worrying because some aspects of the Bill – particularly those dealing with disability – need some serious attention. The Government may be thinking that amendments are best brought during the Lords Committee stage after Christmas and that the priority for the remaining Commons stages is to get them over and done with. Things are very tight if the Bill is to pass before the next election.
It’s worth noting that there is still no date set for the next stages of the Equality Bill. We still need a Report and Third Reading in the Commons before the whole thing goes off to the Lords. This is getting really tight now – has the Government got the time (or the will) to push it through?
Today the Equality Commission publish a major report into the gender pay gap in the financial services industry. You can download and read the full report here.
To an extent pointing out the ways in which the industry discriminates against women is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I am still disappointed by the content of the report. While all of the headlines are about the gender pay gap, it is clear from the report that the key issue is occupational segregation. I don’t doubt that female hedge fund managers face a culture of discrimination, but too much of this report is about comparing male hedge fund managers with female admin workers or cashiers. Not enough account is taken of how a very few incredibly highly paid employees can distort the overall average.
Continue reading ‘Gender Pay Gap in Financial Services’
