Late by 88
seconds
The Employment Appeal
Tribunal (EAT) has upheld a tribunal's decision
that it had no jurisdiction to consider a
complaint of unfair dismissal as the claim had
been presented 88 seconds late.
The time limit for
bringing unfair dismissal claims is normally three
months, starting with the effective date of
termination. The time limit may be extended if the
complaint is presented within such further period
as the tribunal considers reasonable, where it is
satisfied that it was not "reasonably practicable"
for the complaint to be presented before the end
of the three month period.
In Beasley v
National Grid Electricity Submissions, the
claimant attempted to submit his claim form by
e-mail at 11:44 p.m. on the last day but mistyped
the email address. The e-mail was returned
undelivered one minute later. He then sent a
"test" email at 11.57 p.m. before sending the
claim form at midnight. The claim form was
received by the Tribunal Service 88 seconds later.
The EAT upheld the
tribunal's decision that the claim form was late
and that it should have been reasonably
practicable for the claimant to have submitted it
on time. The EAT did note that the law
works, first, very harshly against those who are a
few minutes late in presenting their claims and,
second, extremely favourably in relation to
respondent employers who are excused from
defending their actions by virtue of a delay which
has not prejudiced them in any way. Nevertheless,
the statutory provisions relating to time limits
are clear and the tribunal had taken into account
all relevant matters relating to the issue of
reasonable practicability.
Calculating holiday pay on
termination
The EAT has recently
provided guidance in two areas: dismissing a claim
and calculating accrued holiday pay on
termination.
In Yarrow v
Edwards Chartered Accountants, the EAT
confirmed that the tribunal should not have
dismissed a claim for accrued holiday pay under
the Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR) because
the claimant had failed to attend the hearing.
Whilst a tribunal, in these circumstances, may
dismiss or dispose of the proceedings or adjourn
the hearing, if it wishes to take the former
course of action, it should first consider any
information in its possession which has been made
available to it by the parties. In this case, the
tribunal had failed to consider the information
that had been provided by the parties, including
the ET1, ET3 and correspondence from the claimant
setting out the basis of his claim, before
dismissing the claim. As all the relevant
information was before the EAT, and bearing in
mind the sums involved, the EAT decided the
claim.
As the claimant's
employment terminated during his first year, the
EAT decided that his accrued holiday entitlement
under the WTR should have been rounded up to the
nearest day. The daily rate for payment for each
of those days should also have been calculated on
the basis of the number of working days, not
calendar days, in the year.
Note, however, that
pro-rata holiday entitlement during the first year
of employment will no longer need to be rounded
up, as the relevant regulation in the WTR will be
repealed on 1 October 2007, by the Working Time
(Amendment) Regulations 2007.
National Minimum Wage on
the up
The National Minimum
Wage Regulations 1999 (Amendment) Regulations 2007
are due to come into force on 1 October 2007.
The principal rate
will increase from £5.35 per hour to £5.52. For
workers aged 18-21, the rate will rise from £4.45
to £4.60 and for workers below the age of 18 who
have ceased to be of compulsory school age, the
rate will rise from £3.30 to £3.40.
Flexible working -
adoption and carer definitions extended
The Flexible Working
(Eligibility, Complaints and Remedies) (Amendment)
(No 2) Regulations 2007 are due to come into force
on 1 October 2007.
The Regulations amend
the categories of person entitled to make a
request under the statutory right for employees to
request a contract variation to care for a child
or an adult (as provided for under the Employment
Rights Act 1996 and amended by the Work and
Families Act 2006).
Regulation 3
redefines "adopter", extending the definition to
those who are adopting a child, whether
domestically or intercountry, where the child has
not been placed with those adopters by a UK
adoption agency. It also adds definitions of
adoption agency, private foster carers and
residence orders. Regulation 4 adds to the list of
people entitled to request flexible working to
care for a child. The list will include private
foster carers (and the spouse, partner and civil
partner of a private foster carer) and those in
whose favour a residence order is in force in
respect of a child (and the spouse, partner or
civil partner of such a person).
New ACAS online course on
age discrimination
ACAS has produced a
new e-learning module on age discrimination,
providing example letters, case studies and
flowcharts. It can be accessed here (registration is
required).
CV honesty starting to
improve...
There has been a
dramatic drop in falsifications and discrepancies
(18 per cent) on CVs, leading to higher standards
of honesty on CVs, according to a survey, carried
out by the Shell Technology and Enterprise
Programme (STEP) on behalf of Powerchex, an
employee screening company.
The survey took into
account 2,960 job applications submitted to
financial institutions across the UK between June
2006 and May 2007 and compared them to a sample of
2,487 applications submitted in the previous
period (June 2005 - May 2006). The
percentage of financial services CVs with a
discrepancy more than halved from 31 per cent in
2006 to 13 per cent in 2007. Every category
of discrepancy (including academic qualifications
and description of duties) decreased in frequency
except for undisclosed criminal records. The study
attributed this to an increasing number of
temporary workers, who accounted for 89 per cent
of undisclosed criminal records.
Do you find your emails
stressful?
More than a third of
workers feel stressed by the number of emails they
receive at work and a further 28 per cent see them
as a source of pressure, according to a recent
study carried out by researchers at Glasgow and
Paisley universities.
The study found that
employees working on a computer typically switched
applications to view their emails as many as 30 or
40 times an hour, for anything from a few seconds
to a minute. Whilst half the participants said
they checked more than once an hour and 35 per
cent said they did so every 15 minutes, monitoring
software fitted to their machines for the
experiment showed it was more often. The
report also noted that women, in particular,
tended to feel more pressure to respond than
males.
Bring back the tea
trolley!
If you are stressed
by the number of emails you receive, then maybe
the old tradition of the tea trolley may help.
According to a recent survey by Office
Angels, UK workers agree that old fashioned
traditions such as the tea trolley made their
office a more sociable (59 per cent) and relaxed
(55 per cent) place to work, and would help
motivate them at work.
According to the
survey of over 1,000 workers, the top traditions
workers want to bring back are:
-
Taking a full hour
lunch break (39 per cent)
-
Annual 'work
outings' (33 per cent)
-
Subsidised
canteen (29 per cent)
-
The tea lady (26
per cent)
-
Pub lunches that
last all afternoon (23 per cent)