What did we get up to last month?
Katharine and I attended the East Midlands Chamber of Commerce HR Forum towards to the end of October to speak to delegates about settlement agreements as well as updating them on key employment law cases from the past 12 months. There was an excellent turn out and it was great to meet some new contacts who are local to our Nottingham office.
I was also pleased to be asked to write an article for the Business Network magazine produced on behalf of the East Midlands Chamber.
It was great to restart the HR Breakfast Club workshops after the summer break. More than 40 people who have responsibility for their organisation’s HR function attended over the two dates to network and get an update on employment case law. Due to the popularity of these events, we are planning on adding a third date for the next series of workshops which we intend to host in Huntingdon. We hope that this additional location will be more convenient for our clients and contacts who are based to the east of Peterborough.
We saw that 3 former directors of City Link, the delivery company which ceased trading last year leading to the redundancies of 3,000 staff, have been charged with a criminal offence under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA) in connection with those redundancies. Section 193 of TULRCA requires employers to notify the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) of proposals to make 20 or more employees redundant within a 90 day period, which City Link failed to do. Similarly, the Chief Executive of Sports Direct has also been charged under TULRCA in connection with the failure to notify BIS of a large number of redundancies from USC, the clothing retailer owned by Sports Direct. We understand that the criminal proceedings are the first to have been brought under TULRCA despite the legislation having been in force for more than 20 years and the cases are still ongoing. If convicted the directors will face the prospect of an unlimited fine.
Any new cases to be aware of?
Just a couple this month…
The Employment Appeals Tribunal confirmed in Inex Home Improvements Ltd v Hodgkins that employees who are temporarily laid off from their jobs due to a shortage of work may still be part of an organised grouping of employees for TUPE purposes. The temporary nature of the cessation of work was not necessarily enough to mean that those staff were no longer assigned to the group of staff transferring to the new employer under TUPE.
It has been confirmed by EAT in EAD Solicitors LLP v Abrams that corporate bodies can bring discrimination claims under the Equality Act 2010. Mr Abrams was a member of EAD Solicitors LLP. For tax reasons he set up a limited company – of which he as the sole director and shareholder – which replaced him as a member of the LLP. When he reached retirement age, the LLP objected to his company remaining as an LLP member and to Mr Abrams continuing to provide his services to the LLP through his company. Mr Abrams issued a claim for age discrimination in the employment naming both himself and his company as claimants, and the LLP sought to get the company’s claim struck out on the basis that it was not a person and therefore could not have protection under the Equality Act. Both the employment tribunal in the first instance and the EAT confirmed that the company’s claim could continue. The Equality Act 2010 does not simply protect individuals from discrimination based on their own protected characteristics, but it identifies discrimination as treatment caused by or related to a protected characteristic. Furthermore, it is expressly set out in legislation (the Interpretation Act 1978) that a “person” will include a body corporate unless the contrary intention is expressed in the relevant legislation, which the EAT concluded was not the case in the Equality Act 2010. Given that corporate entities can be found to be perpetrators of discrimination, there was no logical basis for concluding that corporations could not also be found to be victims of discrimination.
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