Employment Law Blog - Employment Law Advocates

Employment law and magical realism

03-Oct-2011 / James Medhurst / No Comments

This is my last post on the blog before I head off to South America for a few months. Reflecting on my experience of employment law so far, I am reminded of how my view of reality has sometimes been twisted by the way in which the system works. Appeals against Employment Tribunal decisions are only allowed on a point of law and appeals usually proceed on the basis that the facts found by the Tribunal are correct, even when it is known to ...

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The News of the World again

13-Sep-2011 / James Medhurst / No Comments

Last week, the House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Committee heard further evidence in its investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World. Jonathan Chapman, a former director of legal affairs at News International, and Daniel Cloke, its former HR director, gave some remarkable evidence about the payments totalling £230,000 which were made to the jailed royal editor, Clive Goodman, following his dismissal, after a guilty plea to phone hacking charges. Chapman had previously given written evidence to the committee in ...

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Caste discrimination

23-Aug-2011 / James Medhurst / No Comments

A couple was reported to have brought the first ever case of caste discrimination in the UK to the Birmingham Employment Tribunal last week. Well, this cannot quite be correct because caste discrimination is not expressly covered by UK employment law. Rather, the Equality Act gives the Secretary of State the power to introduce regulations to outlaw caste discrimination. The current Secretary of State, Theresa May, is considering a newly commissioned report on the issue. In the meantime, the Birmingham claimants will have to try to bring their ...

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Employment status for discrimination claims

03-Aug-2011 / James Medhurst / No Comments

The Supreme Court has now given judgment in Jivraj v Hashwani, a case which I first discussed here. The decision of the Court of Appeal has been overturned, which comes as no great surprise. It may be as a result of this, and the fact that the case is strictly speaking a commercial law case, that it has received rather little attention so far from employment law commentators. However, as well as allowing those who use the services of arbitrators to breathe a ...

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Employment law issues at the News of the World

15-Jul-2011 / James Medhurst / No Comments

There has been a lot of discussion in the papers about what might happen if the employees of the News of the World are eventually dismissed on the grounds of redundancy (it has not happened yet - they are all on gardening leave for 90 days - which is the amount of time required to carry out a collective redundancy consultation and consider alternative employment). Some of it is questionable. According to one opinion quoted in the Evening Standard, "it is ...

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