-
No-smoking
signs will have to be displayed in all
smoke-free premises and vehicles.
-
Staff
smoking rooms and indoor smoking areas will no
longer be allowed.
-
Smoking
in a smoke-free place will be an offence,
punishable by a fine.
-
It
will be the duty of any person who controls or
is concerned with the management of smoke-free
premises to prevent people from smoking on the
premises. This is also punishable by a
fine.
-
There
are exemptions from the smoke-free requirement,
which relate to places which, whilst being a
person's place of work, also have a residential
purpose (e.g. prison cells, residential care
homes).
Employers will need
to consider a number of issues in relation to the
forthcoming ban (including the approach to smoking
breaks, reviewing their policies and the need to
factor in smoking offences into the disciplinary
procedure). Basic guidance for employers has been
provided by the Smokefree England website.
Contacts lists - who owns
them?
Where an employee
creates and keeps all his contacts on his
employer's computer system, it has been decided
that such a list of information belongs to the
employer - this includes personal contacts and
business contacts which the employee had
accumulated prior to joining his employer.
In PennWell
Publishing (UK) Limited v Isles and others,
the High Court confirmed that where an address
list is contained on Outlook or a similar program
which is part of the employer's email system, and
is backed up by the employer or by arrangement
with the employer, the database or list of
information will belong to the employer and
therefore should not be copied or removed in its
entirety by employees for use outside their
employment or after their employment comes to an
end. Significantly, the court expressed the view
that it is highly desirable that employers should
devise and publish an email policy such as the
employers in this case (which outlined that the
email system should only be used for business
use). However, in this case, it was held that the
employer had failed to communicate the policy
adequately to the employee concerned.
If the employee in
this case, a journalist, had maintained his
contact list separately, in the form of a personal
address list to which he had selectively added
journalistic contacts to be maintained for career
purposes, rather than for the purposes of his
employment, the court held that he would have been
entitled as a journalist to develop and maintain
such a list.
This is an important
case for employers. Email policies should not only
clarify and identify which information will be
considered to belong to the employer (taking
into account information stored on computers and,
for example, mobile phones), they must also be
properly incorporated into contracts of employment
and communicated to employees.
Constructive dismissal -
conduct of grievance procedures and
compensation
The recent case of
GAB Robins (UK) Limited v Triggs has
clarified two important principles in relation to
constructive dismissal.
First, tribunals
should not apply the 'band of reasonable
responses' test to an employer's conduct of its
grievance procedure where it is alleged that the
conduct of the grievance procedure is the "last
straw" giving rise to a constructive dismissal
claim.
The earlier case of
Abbey National plc v Fairbrother
established that in a constructive dismissal case
involving resignation in the context of an
allegedly flawed grievance procedure, it is
necessary to ask whether the employer's conduct of
the grievance procedure was within the band or
range of reasonable responses to the employee's
grievance. In GAB Robins (UK) Ltd v
Triggs, the employer argued that the same
test should be followed where the alleged failings
in a grievance procedure are the 'last straw'
leading to resignation. The Employment Appeal
Tribunal (EAT) rejected this argument, holding
that the range of reasonable responses test has no
application to the employer's conduct of a
grievance procedure where it is the true last
straw relied upon.
The second principle
involved the issue of loss of earnings in this
case, since the particular point of law had not
been the subject of past judicial consideration.
The EAT held that the course of conduct by the
employer amounting to a breach of the implied term
of trust and confidence formed part of the
constructive dismissal, and the employee's ill
health caused by that breach was to be treated as
a consequence of the dismissal. This led to loss
of earnings which would otherwise have been
received at the full rate from the employer, and
such loss was attributable to action taken by the
employer. The claim for loss of earnings was
therefore to be assessed by a tribunal under the
statutory unfair dismissal regime (rather than in
the civil courts by means of a common law claim
e.g. for the loss flowing from psychiatric
injury).
Regulations to increase
statutory holiday entitlement to 28 days
The Working Time
(Amendment) Regulations 2007, aimed at increasing
statutory holiday entitlement from 20 to 28 days,
have now been laid in draft before Parliament.
As outlined in our
last update,
the Government published its response to the
second round of consultation on the increases to
statutory holiday entitlement earlier this month.
Draft regulations were subsequently laid before
Parliament for approval (which is due to be by the
end of this month), which outline the proposed
amendments to the Working Time Regulations 1998.
The initial increase of holiday (from 4 weeks to
4.8 weeks) is due to come into force on 1 October
2007, and the second increase (from 4.8 weeks to
5.6 weeks) has now been delayed until 1 April
2009.
New ACAS
guidance
ACAS has issued new
guidance on:
UK economy benefits from
migrant workers
Our
economy is benefiting from the influx of migrant
workers to the UK, according to a recent TUC study
'The economics of
migration'.
TUC
research shows that migrant workers are paying
more in taxes than the value of the public
services they receive and, contrary to the image
often portrayed in the media, the arrival of
migrant workers has not necessarily depressed jobs
or wages.
Enter the
timelords...
The
Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) has published
the final report of its
general investigation into the transformation of
work.
According
to the EOC, despite the growth in flexible
working, the UK is lagging behind its European
competitors. Only 20% of UK employers offer
tele-working, one of the most popular and
cost-effective forms of flexible working, compared
to around 40% in Germany, Sweden and Denmark.
Whilst flexi-time is available in around 90% of
German and Swedish companies, just 48% of UK
companies offer it. The EOC has therefore called
on political parties, employers and the government
to create a new culture of work that's fit for all
of the UK's 29 million workers.
The
report suggests four new flexible working models
that it believes could benefit both workers
and employers, depending on whether a worker is a
'timelord', 'shift-shaper', 'time-stretcher'
or 'remote-controller' (each model corresponds to
the way in which a worker controls their hours and
place of work).
Struggling to retain
staff?
A
growing number of organisations have been
struggling to retain their staff over the past
year and recruitment difficulties persist,
according to a new report from the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
(CIPD).
However,
the research also shows that a number of steps may
help UK employers tackle this problem, including
recruiting from overseas, targeting migrant
workers and training existing staff.
The
CIPD's annual Recruitment, Retention and Turnover
Survey finds that almost eight in ten
organisations struggled to hang on to their staff
in 2006, compared to nearly seven in ten in
2005.
Ageing workforce due to
treble by 2017
UK
employers need to prepare for an ageing workforce
as three-quarters (78%) of employees anticipate
working beyond 65, according to Aon Consulting.
Only
an estimated one million are currently working
past state pension age but this is expected to
treble amongst people aged 65-70 by 2017.
Aon Consulting's research found that a quarter of
respondents would carry on working past the
official retirement age simply because they wanted
to, whereas 53% believe it will be necessary to
increase their pension.
