In this
update:
Guidance on employing
children
The
Department for Children, Schools and Families
has published Guidance on the
employment of children, which is intended to set
out the key provisions of the law on child
employment, together with best practice advice,
for employers, local authorities, parents and
other stakeholders.
The
Guidance, which covers employment in England,
includes information on:
- age limits for employing children and hours
of work
- the types of work which are prohibited or
restricted
- additional health and safety
requirements
- work experience
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Substantial change
in working conditions to employee's material
detriment
The
Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has confirmed
that it is a question of fact whether there has
been a substantial change in an employee's
working conditions and the nature, as well as
the degree, of change will need to be
considered. When assessing whether the change is
to the employee's detriment, an Employment
Tribunal must consider the impact of the
proposed change from the employee's point of
view.
In
Tapere v South London and Maudsley NHS
Trust, the employee worked for Lewisham
Primary Care Trust (the PCT). Her contract
stated that her place of work was Burgess Park,
Camberwell but it included a mobility clause
which provided that she could be required to
perform her duties either temporarily or
permanently at other locations within the PCT.
The employee was subsequently transferred to the
South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (the Trust)
under The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection
of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE).
The
Trust proposed to move the employee to Bethlem
Hospital, Beckenham under the mobility clause
but the employee was concerned about the impact
this would have on her arrangements to collect
her daughter from school. When she returned from
holiday and was told to work at Bethlem
Hospital, she resigned. The employee claimed
constructive dismissal and argued that she had
been dismissed as a result of a substantial
change to her working conditions to her material
detriment (under Regulation 4(9) of
TUPE).
The
Tribunal held that she had not been dismissed
because, "viewed objectively", there had been no
material change in her working conditions to her
material detriment. The EAT disagreed. It
confirmed that whether there had been a
substantial change in working conditions was a
question of fact, to be determined by reference
to the nature and degree of change. When
deciding whether a change was substantial, it
was not necessary to consider whether the
perspective should be objective or
subjective.
When
examining whether the change was to the
employee's "material detriment", the impact of
the proposed change also has to be more than
trivial or fanciful and should be considered
from the employee's point of view. The questions
that should have been asked were whether the
employee regarded the potential disruption to
childcare arrangements and a longer journey as
detrimental and, if so, whether that was a
reasonable position for the employee to
adopt.
The
EAT substituted a finding that the employee had
been dismissed and remitted the question of
whether the dismissal was unfair to a fresh
Employment Tribunal.
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EHRC inquiry into
financial services sector
The Equality and Human Rights Commission
(EHRC) has published the findings from its
inquiry into sex discrimination in the finance
sector.
The findings, which include data from
a questionnaire sent to 50 companies employing
22.6 per cent of workers in the sector, reveal
that women receive around 80 per cent less in
performance-related pay and that nearly all
women taking up new jobs in these companies
still start on lower average salaries than men.
Other
findings from the inquiry include:
-
a
gap in annual basic pay between women and men of
39 per cent. This gender pay gap rises to 47 per
cent for annual total earnings when performance
related pay, bonuses and overtime are taken into
account.
-
significant
'in-grade' gender pay gaps in at least half of
all job grades/categories, where men and women
are assumed to be doing the same or equivalent
work, were found in 63 per cent of cases.
-
less
than half of cases report making some effort to
address the pay gap.
-
only
23 per cent of cases report that they have
undertaken an equal pay audit.
The
EHRC reports that the finance sector has one of
the highest overall gender pay gaps in the UK
economy, with women working full-time earning 55
per cent less annual gross salary than men. This
compares to a pay gap of 28 per cent for the
economy generally.
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CIPD
executive pay guidelines
The CIPD has launched a set of general
principles on executive pay.
The principles are designed to
provide a framework to help HR directors and
Remuneration Committees when developing
executive remuneration policies, practices and
structures and have been drawn up to be
applicable across sector, industry and
organisation size.
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Staff fraud on the rise as
recession bites
Employee fraud
rose more than two-thirds during the first half
of this year, demonstrating the impact of the
recession, according to CIFAS, the fraud
prevention service.
Cases
filed by CIFAS staff fraud members for
'dishonest action by staff to obtain a benefit
by theft or deception' (e.g. the falsification
of expenses or time sheets and targets)
increased by 69 per cent in the first six months
of 2009 (when compared with the last six months
of 2008). Of particular interest is that, in the
69 per cent increase of dishonest actions by
staff, the number of women involved during the
first half of 2009 more than doubled when
compared with the last half of
2008.
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Social networking – employers crack down
Employers are gradually cracking down on
which websites their staff can view and are
increasingly choosing to block access to popular
social networking sites, according to data from
ScanSafe.
According to their data, there has
been a 20 per cent increase in the number of
customers blocking social networking sites in
the last six months. At present, 76 per cent of
companies are choosing to block social
networking and it is now a more popular category
to block than online shopping (52 per cent),
weapons (75 per cent), alcohol (64 per cent),
sports (51 per cent) and Webmail (58 per cent).
However, less than half (47 per cent) take the
same approach to blocking online
banking.
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