April 2019 Newsletter

It’s April and we hope you had an egg-cellent Easter break and were not too shell-shocked to be back to work.  It’s difficult to ovoid (sorry) egg puns once you get going.

To help you get cracking (sorry again) we’ve hunted out the most up-to-date HR/Employment Law news for you.  We feed back on the results of the latest Gender Pay Gap reports and look at how employers can help reduce their pay gaps. We also update you on the latest Government guidance on Modern Slavery and the EU Settlement Scheme.

In our case update we look at when directors may be personally liable for breaches of their employment contract, the awarding of personal injury compensation in the Employment Tribunals for failure to provide rest breaks, and whether disability discrimination can arise out of a mistaken belief.

 

What Luke has been doing recently…

The last couple of months for me and the team has mostly been Tribunals, Tribunals, Tribunals.  We are currently dealing with a number of claims that is unprecedented since the long ago days of 2013, before the Tribunals fees rules came in.  As Anne-Marie’s blog a few days ago comments, employers of all shapes and sizes need to put ET claims firmly back at the top of their list as a key risk.

One silver lining with so many more claims is that most are weak, and so are able to be settled for a modest amount of money fairly soon after you have submitted your defence.  Our carefully calibrated fixed fee for handling ET claims takes that into account and we’d be very pleased to tell you more if you get hit with a claim and would like to know about the cost of fighting it.

 

A roundup of this month’s news: 

• Government Reforms (1): Gender Pay Gap returns
• Government Reforms (2): Modern slavery
• Government Reforms (3): BREXIT – Government Guidance
• Case update (1): Personal liability of company directors
  
• Case update (2): Working time regulations & personal injury
• Case update (3): Discrimination – Whose religion or belief?