Improving workplace relations
Most of my blogs have been about topics in the news that I find interesting, or on which I’d like to provoke a little debate, but this time round I thought I’d take a slightly different approach and reach out to people who, like me, run or work for small/micro businesses for whom sickness absence […]
Continue reading...Well, it’s been a long time coming, but the Cameron Government’s decision to charge fees for people to raise claims in the Employment Tribunal has finally been shown to be illegal. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court has ruled that charging people up to £1200 so they can challenge the legality of their employer’s […]
Continue reading...We (OK, a few of us) were on tenterhooks waiting for the publication of the Taylor Report into employment practices in the UK, but will it make things clearer or further muddy the waters? Uber, Deliveroo and Pimlico Plumbers have all been answering legal questions about the legitimacy of a business model that sees them, […]
Continue reading...In spite of political insistence that the economy is recovering, and has been for a good while, this week the BBC’s Economics Editor has predicted that wages are likely to stagnate for a good while longer. That conclusion isn’t really a surprise, but it will be a disappointment for many given the extent to which pay has […]
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Trade Unions face big new fines “The number of working days lost are at historically low levels when looking at the long-run monthly time series back to the 1930s.” Sneaking past the radar, under cover of Brexit, the Government is running a number of consultations, including ones around the Trade Union Act 2016 and Corporate […]
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This extremely useful summary by David Morgan at Burgess Paull of the upcoming changes through the Trade Union Act caught my eye, and brought to mind some of the key issues surrounding the Act. The existence of this legislation in the first place is a bizarre piece of ideological policy making, since it certainly isn’t/wasn’t […]
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This is an interesting one. An Employment Appeal Tribunal has recently ruled that an employer acted fairly in dismissing someone while taking into account a number of disciplinary issues that were, according to their procedures, ‘spent’. The case is an extreme one, with the employer having taken 18 formal actions against the individual over a 12 year […]
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The French now have an absolute right NOT to check their e-mail out of hours, but why do people do it in the first place? Is a law necessary? And how much of it comes as an expectation of the employer, and how much is self-inflicted? I suspect there may be a PhD in accurately […]
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Bullying & harassment is a growing problem in UK workplaces, but we shouldn’t accept that as just a fact of life. Today is the start of Anti-Bullying week. Designated by the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA), the focus is largely on bullying amongst children, but it also encapsulates issues that arise in the workplace. What is workplace […]
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Last weekend there were news articles about Lidl’s decision to appeal against the ruling that they should recognise GMB union at their Bridgend depot – but why? The story is reported on the GMB website, which handily also includes Lidl’s statement on the issue. A significant majority of staff at Lidl’s Bridgend depot indicated that they wanted to […]
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