EMPLOYMENT UPDATE

Bills before Parliament

At 24th January 2006 there were no less than 29 Bills with employment law relevance either already introduced or at an advanced stage of preparation, including one in the Scottish Parliament.   These include, importantly,  the Equality Bill and the Work and Families Bill both of which have had their 3rd readings in the House of Commons within the last 10 days.  Notes on all 29 Bills and prospective Bills are included on our website, together with an archive of lapsed employment law related Bills since 2002.

New ICR and IRLR Case Reports

Thumbnail summaries and/or or headnotes of all cases reported in the ICR and IRLR law reports since end 1999 are available on our website.  All cases reported in ICR 2006 part 1 and in IRLR 2006 vol 35 no 1 are now noted/summarised and short commentary is provided. For most new cases there are direct links to free versions of the full judgments on the internet.   This is in addition to linked thumbnail summaries and/or headnotes of more than 1,500 other employment cases, new and old.

Increase in Compensation Limits

The annual inflation-linked increase in limits on the amounts which can be awarded by employment tribunals come into force in respect of dismissals on or after 1st February 2006.  Maximum compensatory award on unfair dismissal rises from 56,800 to 58,400 and maximum amount of a week's pay for basic award calculations risea from 280 to 290.  It is worth noting that under the Work and Families Bill, the government also intends to take power to make a one-off additional, "inflation-busting", increase to these and other compensation limits.

Incapacity Benefit and Welfare Reform

The Government has recently (24th January 2006) published its long awaited Green Paper "A new deal for welfare: Empowering people to work"  .  The plan is to achieve an 80 percent employment rate for people of working age. The paper proposes a reform of incapacity benefit and of housing benefit.

Equal Pay

Two important items of interest, one general and the other technical. 

General 

Women, especially women employed by public authorities, are being encouraged (notably by one particular law firm) to bring equal pay claims.  They are having huge success, especially in the North of England and in Scotland, where there are now almost daily newspaper reports of Councils having to raise tens of millions of pounds to settle claims.  It is now even suggested by the lawyers involved that many women who agreed settlements negotiated by their unions may have been sold short and consideration is being given to suing the unions concerned

Technical

An employer can justify a disparity of pay between male and female employees doing the same work if he can prove the disparity is genuinely due to a material factor which is not the difference of sex.  A difficult question arises as to whether or not this should be judged by applying objective standards.  For some time the Courts have said no, and therefore as a general rule the subjective view of the employer has been enough.  Then in November 2005 the Employment Appeal Tribunal, quoting the European Court of Justice, said yes.  Then in December 2005 the Court of Appeal said no again - but without referring to the  Employment Appeal Tribunal's decision. Given the complexities and uncertainties, it is essential that extremely careful legal advice should be taken by any employer facing an equal pay claim, especially if he is considering using the "genuine material factor" defence.
For more information go to Sex discrimination / equal pay and terms of employment and/or notes on  Armstrong v Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Hospital Trust CA 2005 on our website.