Legal Issues – Is a ‘use it or lose it’ approach to holiday still lawful?
Background
UK law in relation to holidays comes from two primary sources. On the legislative side, the Working Time Regulations (WTR) are based on the European Working Time Directive (WTD), and stipulate (among other things) the minimum amount of holiday… Legal Issues – Bereavement leave and other potential developments
The Government has introduced new legislation to support parents who suffer the loss of a child, which recently received royal assent.
Some of the detail of the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018 is still to be finalised in… Legal Issues – When is a belief protected in discrimination law?
The protection against discrimination in relation to religion or belief has long been a feature of UK employment law. Originally introduced in the early 2000s to comply with a European Directive, the current laws in operation are contained in the… Legal Issues – ‘Sleep-in’ shifts and the national minimum wage
At a basic level, legislation in relation to the national minimum wage (NMW) is relatively straightforward: workers must be paid at the correct minimum rate for each hour that they work, depending on their age (or year of apprenticeship).
However,… Legal Issues – Dress codes
The issue of dress codes came to the fore in May 2016 when a female worker was sent home from her first day working for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) because she wasn’t wearing high heels.
The worker in question, Nicola Thorp, was… Legal Issues – Employment status
We’ve written a number of updates on this topic in the last couple of years, as there have been both case law and legislative developments happening during that time.
Much of the case law has related to companies such as… Legal Issues – Family leave and discrimination
Background
In June 2017 we reported on the case of Ali v Capita Customer Management Limited, in which Mr Ali’s employer paid enhanced maternity pay but only the statutory rate of pay for Shared Parental Leave (SPL). As Mr Ali… Legal Issues – The national minimum wage and offending companies
The National Minimum Wage (NMW) is set to rise again from 1 April 2018, with the rates for all workers increasing. In particular, the rate for those aged 25 or over (often referred to as the national living wage) is… Legal Issues – Employer’s knowledge of disability
Background
In many cases of disability discrimination, the employer has a potential defence to the claim(s) if it can show that it didn’t know, and couldn’t reasonably have been expected to know, that the employee was disabled.
This is not… Legal Issues – Rise in tribunal claims
In July last year, following a number of appeals from the trade union Unison, the Supreme Court eventually found that the tribunal fee regime introduced in 2013 was unlawful. Since then, the government has had the unenviable job of having…