Welcome to Employment Edit, our pick of the key employment law developments from the last couple of weeks:
- Holiday – when a worker increases their hours, or moves from part-time to full-time, this does not affect any statutory annual leave that has already accrued. The ECJ has confirmed that an employer does not need to retrospectively recalculate any accrued annual leave. However, any leave accrued after the change in working hours will need to take account of the increased working hours. Greenfield v The Care Bureau Ltd.
- Collective redundancies – the criminal prosecution of three former directors of City Link has failed. They were found not guilty of failing to give the Business Secretary sufficient notice of their intention to make redundancies after giving evidence that they genuinely believed that a sale in administration was not only possible but quite probable and there was no proposal at a key board meeting to make redundancies.
- Redundancy – when considering the number of dismissals for the purposes of collective consultation, an employer may need to look wider than simply the redundancies proposed in the redundancy exercise. This is because the ECJ has held that the definition of 'redundancy' in the European Collective Redundancies Directive is wide enough to include resignations where an employer has unilaterally made significant and detrimental changes to essential elements of an employee's employment contract for reasons not related to the individual (in this case, the employer imposed a 25% reduction in pay). Pujante Rivera v Gestora Clubs Dir SL and another.
- Bullying and harassment – Acas have issued a policy discussion paper: Seeking better solutions: tackling bullying and ill-treatment in Britain’s workplaces.
If you would like more information, or specific advice, please contact Roger Bull, or get in touch with your usual Burges Salmon contact.