As promised last Monday, I am delighted today to welcome my first guest blogger, Ian Barratt (pictured, right) of Mind Strengths Ltd, to present his Seven Top Stress Management Tips on this third Monday of January, the allegedly most miserable day of the year. Ian is a qualified stress management consultant speaker and author. His book “The Phoenix Strategy”, co-authored with Amanda Robinson was published last October. Mind Strengths Ltd is a consultancy company offering workplace strress management , wellbeing and support services. Tomorrow I will look at how employers can minimise the risk of being sued for stress at work by employees.
Age Discrimination, Bullying & Harassment, Contracts of Employment, Equality, Personal Injury, Race Discrimination, Religion and Belief Discrimination, constructive dismissal, stress at work, unfair dismissal
constructive dismissal, discrimination, employees, how do I cope with stress, Ian Barratt, Mind Strengths, Miserable Monday, occupational illness, Personal Injury, Protection from Harassment Act 1997, stress at work, stress+management
As Annabel Kaye of Irenicom points out in her very useful article on the subject on the The Grapevine online magazine the concept of reasonable belief crops up throughout employment law – particularly in dismissals. In the case of Taylor v Alidair CA 1978 ICR 445, CA Lord Denning got to the nub of the matter with his customary succinctness;
“Whenever a man is dismissed for incapacity or incompetence it is sufficient that the employer honestly believes on reasonable grounds that the man is incapable and incompetent. It is not necessary for the employer to prove that he is in fact incapable or incompetent”
Or, to be more precise, and rather less brutal, when did your employment terminate? In technical employment law parlance, what is the “Effective Date of Termination (EDT)”? This is a crucially important date in cases where employer-employee have fallen out because it is from the EDT that time limits for issuing proceedings at an Employment Tribunal (ET) are calculated.
An employee usually has three months in which to issue his/her proceedings – e.g. for unfair dismissal or for discrimination claims. Problems can arise when the papers commencing the claim (called the ET1) are lodged close to the three (calendar) month less one day limit. The ET is very strict about accepting claims outside the three month limit and will only do so if it was not “reasonably practical” for the proceedings to have been lodged within that time.
Kevin Keegan has won his case for constructive dismissal against former employers Newcastle United, being awarded £2mn by the Premier League’s Manager’s Arbitration Tribunal. He left the club in September 2008 after falling out with them over the purchase of a player Ignacio Gonzalez (who?) against his wishes.
Employers have to repay sick pay
Some good news for employees came out last week with the decision by the European Court of Justice in Pereda v Madrid Movilidad SA that says if an employee is sick whilst on holiday, they can retake the holiday later on or carry the days lost over to the next year.
Not surprisingly employers’ representatives are unhappy about it as it places additional burdens on them. It also increases the risk of unscrupulous employees taking advantage. No guidance is offered by the ECJ on how this could be policed. Employers can only insist on a sick note from GPs after seven days absence.
As an employer, if you want to avoid your name appearing in the Metro or any of the other free papers, try to avoid sacking employees suffering from cancer by email. This is the moral from the recent report concerning Melinda Bolnar, a 27 year old teacher suffering from bowel cancer and who had just endured seven months of chemotherapy and given a 30% chance of survival. According to the report it is alleged that her private school sacked her by email. I should point out that the case is due to be heard at an Employment Tribunal later this year and the above report are merely the employee’s allegations against her employer and not the proven facts.
This post isn’t about Freddie Flintoff bowling 5-92 to defeat the Aussies at Lords (a very constructive dismissal in my view) but, sadly, is about some recent cases on the law relating to constructive dismissal. The recent case of Bournemouth University Higher Education Corporation v Buckland [2009] EAT whilst not being as newsworthy as this week’s actions at Lords is, nevertheless, important stuff on the difficult topic of constructive dismissal. In my experience few topics cause as much confusion or are as overused as constructive dismissal. Every second client thinks they have or are about to suffer it.
This is a preview of
Constructive Dismissal – recent developments
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Read the full post (845 words, estimated 3:23 mins reading time)
The House of Lords (HL) has finally handed down judgment in the case of Stringer v HMRC. To say this decision has been keenly anticipated is an understatement. I posted on it a little while ago.
This is a preview of
Will Court decision lead to an increase in dismissals?
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Read the full post (288 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)
Apart from the post below I haven’t touched upon these regulations, mainly because they are not the most interesting regulations in the world to read. However, I have been spurred on by posting on the case of Royden & others v Barnetts (see below) and TUPE comes up quite a few times on the search engines as a keyword. In future posts I will look at the TUPE issues on the insolvency of the employer as well as the consultation obligations imposed upon employers by TUPE.
So, what do the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) actually do?
I’ve got to admit my ignorance, I’ve only just discovered the verb “to dooce” and what a great word it is! There are various definitions but most include ”to lose your job because of something that you wrote on your blog”. Rather incongruously, it can also mean to be afflicted with constipation, although if you were about to lose your job because you spilled the beans on your employer, it’s unlikely that constipation would be your main concern.
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