Do you know your employment rights?

  21st August 2017

In the latest of recent headline cases involving employment law, last week it emerged that many large companies have failed to pay their workers the national minimum wage. On Thursday 17th August, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs listed 233 employers that had failed to comply with the legislation relating to minimum wage.

The following link gives more detail of how the firms, including Argos and John Lewis, under-paid their staff and explains how pay should be calculated: http://theukbulletin.com/2017/08/17/why-do-companies-like-argos-fail-to-pay-the-minimum-wage/

This is not the only employment matter making waves at the moment. At the end of July, the Supreme Court ruled that employment tribunal fees (the cost for an employee to make a claim) unlawfully prevented access to justice and impinged upon EU rights being enforced. The judgment of the appeal made by Unison meant the Employment Tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunals Fee Order 2013 was quashed. All fees for proceedings under the 2013 Order were immediately stopped and late last week it was confirmed that full details for the process of re-imbursement of fees will be issued shortly.

The full judgment can be found at the following link: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2015-0233-judgment.pdf.

And, of course, the impact of cases involving gig economy workers continue to develop following the recently published ‘Good Work’ Taylor Report.

The report can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/627671/good-work-taylor-review-modern-working-practices-rg.pdf