July 2009 Archives - Employment Law Advocates

Christmas and New Year Office Closure

01-Dec-2011 / Employment Law Advocates / Comments Off

Our office will be closing for the holiday period at 12.00pm on Friday 23rd December 2011 and will reopen again until 10.00am on Tuesday 3rd January 2012. Advocates will be mostly unavailable but may have intermittent access to email or telephone during this period. If you are an existing client, please contact your Advocate directly by email or telephone. If you are a new client or are seeking advice, please email info@employmentlawadvocates.com or complete the enquiry form on our Contact Us page ...

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Dark law – Employment status Part 2

28-Jul-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

As I noted in my last post on this topic, it is rare to find a factor in an employment relationship that provides a knock-out point as to the nature of that relationship. However, the exception that proves the rule is tax. There is remarkably little authority on the importance of this point¬†but my experience is that tribunals give considerably more weight to it than is strictly allowed, and for good policy reasons. It would be highly unfortunate for a ...

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Substituting claimants

27-Jul-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

It is common in Employment Tribunals for there to be an application to substitute one respondent for another, most frequently because of a mistake, but it is unusual for a tribunal to be asked to substitute the name of a claimant. These are the facts of Enterprise Liverpool v Edwards, a recent decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The situation arose because a claim for failure to consult about a TUPE transfer can only be¬†brought¬†by an individual employee if no ...

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Unconscious discrimination

24-Jul-2009 / James Medhurst / 1 Comment

There was an interesting story¬†in the Daily Mail a few weeks ago in which the government was criticised for making fake applications for¬†several jobs to¬†find out¬†whether candidates¬†from ethnic minorities¬†were being¬†put at a disadvantage. This was done in part because of a proposed amendment to the Equality Bill that CVs should be required to exclude the name of the applicant to¬†reduce the risk of unconscious discrimination on the grounds of race. I confess that I fail to see what the fuss ...

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IRLR

17-Jul-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

I am a big fan of the Industrial Relations Law Reports, which I find is¬†much fresher than the Industrial Case Reports and¬†feel¬†it selects a better¬†choice of cases. I still await the day when one of my cases is reported in it and I was disproportionately excited to discover the inclusion this month of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary v Adams, which cites a case in which I was involved. Rather tangential, I know. I greatly enjoy the commentary of Michael Rubenstein¬†in the ...

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Fareham College v Walters

/ James Medhurst / No Comments

I did promise to report back on this case¬†when the judgment appeared and I apologise for the fact that it has taken me a week to do so. However, this is partly due to the fact that the only really new and interesting point is obiter. This is not the first case to say that a failure to apply Malcolm will not invalidate a finding of disability discrimination where there has been a failure to make reasonable adjustments prior to ...

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