Blog - Employee Management Ltd

Ched Evans – The Employment Law Implications

The furore over the attempts by Ched Evans to return to professional football since his release from prison in October 2014 still shows no signs of abating.

The case is interesting from an employment law perspective as it involves the controversial issue of the rehabilitation of sex offenders. One of the reasons it has generated such publicity is because the offender is seeking to return to work in a high-profile, well-remunerated profession where it could [...]

By eml|January 12th, 2015|General, HR / Employment Law News|

EAT clarifies social media related unfair dismissal test

In the case of Game Retail v Laws, the ET found in favour of the Claimant in that the dismissal was unfair and went beyond the range of reasonable responses.

Law had placed a number of offensive remarks on his personal Twitter account and whilst none of the comments related to the employer and were not written during work time, as Law had a number of connections with around 65 stores, some of which followed his [...]

By eml|January 5th, 2015|HR / Employment Law News|

UNISON’s High Court tribunal fee bid fails for a second time

As reported last week, UNISON’s second judicial review application challenging the legality of employment tribunal fees has been dismissed by the High Court.

Tribunal fees were introduced in July 2013 and in February of this year Unison made an initial application for a review. This was rejected on the basis that it was too early to judge how the tribunal fees system would work in practice. Following statistics from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) showing [...]

By eml|December 23rd, 2014|HR / Employment Law News|

Back-dated holiday pay claims limited to two years

Employers will welcome the introduction of new regulations significantly limiting their exposure to back-dated claims, following a series of recent rulings regarding what elements of pay should be included in the calculation of holiday pay.

Whilst the recent decision in the case of Bear Scotland v Fulton appeared to limit the scope of back-dated claims to three months (by stating that a period of more than three months between deductions would break the series), there remains [...]

By eml|December 22nd, 2014|HR / Employment Law News|

Equal Treatment – Obesity to be considered a disability

Earlier this year, a Danish court referred various questions to the ECJ in relation to obesity and discrimination law. One of the questions was whether obesity is deemed to be a disability covered by the protection provided for in the Equal Treatment Framework Directive and, if so, what criteria will be decisive when assessing whether or not a person’s obesity means that he or she is protected under the Directive.

In July 2014, the Advocate General [...]

By eml|December 18th, 2014|HR / Employment Law News|

Tribunal fees judicial review dismissed!

It has been reported that Unison’s judicial review application which challenged the legality of employment tribunal fees was dismissed by the High Court this morning.This follows a similarly unsuccessful attempt to challenge the fees regime last February. The reasons behind the latest decision have yet to be released, but will be the subject of a more detailed article in due course.

By eml|December 17th, 2014|HR / Employment Law News|

H&S Concerns? Call Us!

With numerous ‘crazy’ H&S stories that have made headlines in newspapers across the UK in recent months, questions have been raised regarding the general understanding of companies with regards to safety laws in the workplace.

Further inspection, by one of the UK’s leading health and safety firms, into some of the tabloid stories confirmed that many of these cases do in fact raise legitimate concerns about the state of health and safety in some companies [...]

By eml|December 15th, 2014|Health & Safety News|

Shared Parental Leave – Be Prepared!

Couples with babies due and those with children waiting for adoption will soon be able to take shared leave, which will allow the two to share up to 50 weeks of leave. Of this, 37 weeks of pay can be shared. The rules, announced last year, will come into effect after 5th April 2015.

According to the government 285,000 couples will be able to take advantage of the shared leave arrangement, without being alienated by [...]

By eml|December 4th, 2014|HR / Employment Law News|

The Implications of Wearable Technology in the Workplace

With the advent of smart technology, many companies have started to create new products that deviate from the standard form of phones. Watches, jewellery, wristbands and now even glasses are being fitted with the latest in smart technology to make them more useful in daily life. With functionality getting increasingly broader, what exactly does this mean for businesses and how will the introduction of new, advanced technology be handled within the workplace?

Currently, workers can [...]

By eml|December 2nd, 2014|HR / Employment Law News|

View EML’s Podcast on Early Conciliation

Early Conciliation has been with us for over six months now and stats from Acas indicate they have dealt with 37,000 cases in that time. As you may already know, the scheme requires employees / ex-employees to contact Acas before lodging an employment tribunal claim against their employer / ex-employer.

Once contact is made with Acas, the time limit applicable to any tribunal claim is paused and if the individual expresses a wish to try [...]

By eml|November 28th, 2014|HR / Employment Law News|