A report in The Guardian earlier this week highlighted again the risk to employees in lying or covering up information on job application forms. Cheltenham Borough Council is suing its former managing director, Christine Laird, in the High Court because she allegedly failed to tell them that she had a history of depression when she took the job. In this instance Ms Laird disputes her liability and is fighting the claim.
There was reported this week a case from the European Court of Justice that will have employers and Europhobes going mad. A case called Ainsworth v HMRC (which was actually five conjoined cases) made its way through the English courts to the House of Lords, who referred it to the ECJ. The case (which has now changed its name to Stringer v HMRC, why I don’t know) centres on an interpretation of the Working Time Regulation and the difficult question of whether a person on long term sick leave accrues holiday (and thus the right o be paid for holiday) whilst off sick. In all these cases the employees had used up all their entitlement to sick pay.
This is a copy of an article I wrote for the Docklands and Peninsula newspaper – unedited. It will appear in the week commencing Jan 19th.
Jobsworth is back from its short Festive break, feeling slightly less stressed, albeit somewhat lighter following a nasty gastric bug. The New Year stretches interminably away into the future and the current economic climate doesn’t look like improving anytime soon. Whilst I’m getting back to speed, it is a good chance to remember the long-forgotten ritual of Plough Monday, which was celebrated from pre-industrial until Victorian times on the first Monday after Epiphany – which is January 5th this year.
Please do feel free to leave comments here – feedback is always useful. What I would like to happen, if possible, is for people to write about their experiences with employment law issues or, indeed, employment lawyers for that matter. I’m not seeking to give individual advice via this blog but it would be great to create a “community” where people can swap stories from the ”coal face”. If in doubt don’t put names or identifying remarks in and please don’t libel anyone!
Looking forward to hearing from you.
May I wish all readers of this blog all good wishes for Christmas and the New Year? I will be adding additional posts over the festive period, depending on how bored I become with eating, drinking and watching TV.
Now that Christmas is in three weeks time it seems appropriate to repeat my annual warnings about the perils of enjoying the office Christmas party too much (assuming, of course, that your employer is still holding one).
In all the time I have been writing this column I don’t recall ever having to type ”the law is an ass” before. That’s the first time and the reason is because of a case heard by the Employment Appeal Tribunal reported this week.
At these stressful times it is perhaps appropriate that the Court of Appeal should hand down an important judgment on workplace stress that may make it easier for employees to claim compensation in these cases.
The case of Dickens v O2 plc has just been reported. It concerned an employee of O2 who was placed under great stress through overwork and who told her line managers that she was “at the end of her tether”. They did nothing meaningful to address her problems. Although there were other “stressor factors” in her life as well as her difficult work environment, she was able to show that O2′s failure to deal properly with her had materially contributed to her psychiatric illness. She was signed off sick with stress for several months before O2 terminated her employment.
Leaving aside the global financial problems for a moment, this week (5th October to be precise) saw some important amendments to maternity leave regulations. If there is one topic that is guaranteed to bring me out in a cold sweat, it is maternity leave, with all its manifold time limits and subtle differences depending on whether the woman is on Ordinary Maternity Leave (OML) (for the first 26 weeks) or Additional Maternity Leave (AML) (the second 26 weeks). From the 5th it all became a bit simpler when the differences between the two periods of maternity leave were removed for women whose babies were born after that date. Prior to that date a woman on OML was entitled to all the terms and conditions of employment, like sick pay and pension contributions that she would have received had she been at work. Her contract was only varied in respect of salary, with her entitlement being covered either by her employer’s maternity pay policy (if there was one) or Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP)*. By way of contrast, a woman on AML before the 5th had none of those rights, save for the protection provided by the sex discrimination legislation – the right to return to her old job, to receive proper notice and the employer had a duty to uphold the implied term of trust and confidence and some other technical matters, but no right to receive pension contributions.