The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has published new holiday pay guidance. The guidance was issued after a survey revealed an ‘alarming lack of awareness’ about holiday pay.
The survey showed that half of workers thought that those on zero hours contracts were not entitled to holiday pay. More than half thought they had to work three months before the right to holiday arose. The guidance aims to debunk those and other myths.
The worker status bubble has expanded recently and found its way into the public sector. In Braine v The National Gallery, an employment tribunal has held that art educators are workers when they are working on individual assignments.
The FCA has indicated that it intends to increase the limit of an award which can be made by the Financial Ombudsman Service under its compulsory jurisdiction scheme from £150,000 to £350,000.
We were surprised to come across a situation recently in which an asset financier (who we were not advising) sought to rely upon a declaration contained within its standard terms and conditions to the effect that the assets on finance had been delivered, were of satisfactory quality and were fit for their purpose.
We recently advised asset financiers as to their rights where a company which had taken numerous items of plant and machinery on Hire Purchase purported to sell the assets to a buyer in the European Union who then sold them on to a buyer in Asia.
The Hirer Company was effectively insolvent but it was clear from the investigations we carried out that the purported sale had been arranged by the sole director of the Company, and that no other individual had any real involvement in the transaction on its behalf.
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 (“CRA”) is an important piece of recent legislation which governs many contracts between traders and consumers, and implements the. EU Unfair Contract Terms Directive (93/13/EC) (“UTD”.) “Consumer” is defined in section 2 (3) of the Act as: –
“an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside that individual’s trade, business, craft or profession.”
There is as yet no direct authority on how the definition of consumer applies in the context of security documentation, but the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) has set out the test in the UTD for when it applies to personal Guarantees and security agreements given by an individual to secure debts of a company In Dumitru Tarcău, Ileana Tarcău v Banca Comercială Intesa Sanpaolo România SA (C-74/15) the court held that a personal Guarantee was to be subject to the UTD because it was given by a natural person, acting outside his trade or business, and who had no functional links to the guaranteed company.
Can an employer dismiss an employee for capability reasons when they are contractually entitled to long term disability benefits? No, not fairly, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has said in Awan v ICTS.
In the year of the #metoo campaign, there have been numerous headlines about the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), often involving high profile people. NDAs are used to ensure past misdemeanours stay private. Many settlement agreements contain confidentiality provisions preventing employees talking about the deal and the events leading up to it.
The Ministry of Justice has suggested that employment tribunal fees may be reintroduced. The Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Justice said that a balance could be reached between increasing tribunal funding (via fees) and ensuring employees still had access to justice. He said the Unison Supreme Court case which resulted in fees being abolished did not rule out fees completely. What is important is getting the fees right and ensuring that people who cannot afford to pay can still bring a claim.
ACAS has published new guidance on performance management. It sets out what performance management is and why it is good for both the business and its employees. It sets out the benefits of good performance management systems. These include having motivated staff, getting the best out of employees, delivering projects effectively, and weeding out poor performance.
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The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has published new holiday pay guidance. The guidance was issued after a survey revealed an ‘alarming lack of awareness’ about holiday pay.