Having a contract is a fairly basic necessity if you’re planning to enforce some employment rights. Like trying to cook coq au vin without a coq, you’re not going to get very far claiming unfair dismissal without one. Yet Haley Preston got very far – all the way to the Supreme Court – before finally, yesterday, being sent packing. It seems that sometimes even those in the higher echelons of legal endeavour find the basics difficult too. More
U-turns are delicious. I think I may have actually dribbled over the Government’s abrupt decision last week to outlaw caste discrimination – especially as its previous decision not to legislate was apparently taken ‘after careful consideration’. Presumably it thought it was suddenly time to throw care and consideration to the winds. More
Few names polarise opinion in the way that ‘Margaret Thatcher’ does. For some Thatcher was the free market revolutionary who deregulated the financial sector and made Britain a leading player in the international money markets. For others she was the prime minister who sold our national industries and fostered a culture of greed and self-interest. Feelings still run high more than 20 years after Thatcher left office and were brought to the surface on Monday following the announcement of her death. More
As part of this year’s IDS Managers Benchmark Pay Report, we asked employers about the effectiveness of their own management bonus schemes. It seems that not many thought their own schemes were particularly exceptional. On a scale from one to 10, with one being ineffective, and 10 being totally effective, the majority of respondents rated their own company’s bonus scheme a fairly average 7. Luckily participants also told us where they thought their bonus schemes fell short. More
The Telegraph has published an article reporting that, as a result of the Government’s triennial review of the Low Pay Commission (LPC), the national minimum wage (NMW) ‘could be frozen or cut if it starts to cost jobs or damage economy’. Unite the Union quickly issued a press release stating that this ‘assault on minimum wage will be resisted’, but has Government policy really changed at all? More
In a long awaited speech David Cameron has set out his vision for the European Union. If the Conservative party are elected they will seek to reform the EU considering, among other things, whether ‘the balance is right’ in areas such as ‘social affairs’, which includes employment legislation. Once the Government has attempted reform of the EU Britain will be offered an ‘in or out’ referendum. How would that impact employment law in the UK? More
Britain’s first significant snowfall of 2013 seems the perfect opportunity to revisit and update our Q and A post on employees’ and employers’ rights when staff can’t get to work due to travel disruption. More
The Office for National Statistics is to publish a new RPI-based measure of inflation, ‘RPIJ’, from this March. It will be published alongside the existing Retail Prices Index, the main measure of inflation used in pay-setting and uprating private pensions, Government bonds and gilts. This move follows a consultation over potential changes to RPI, regarded as necessary because of differences between the RPI and the Government’s preferred measure of inflation for macroeconomic purposes, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI). More
