Monthly Archive for October, 2007

Compulsory Retirement

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on October 18, 2007
in Discrimination and Retirement
. 1 Comment

Despite the new Age Discrimination laws, employers can still compulsorily retire their employees at (usually) age 65 so long as they follow a lengthy and mostly pointless procedure. For me, this is another example of why the laws don’t make any sense, but Age Concern more constructively thought that the compulsory retirement provisions went against the EU directive which lurks behind all equality legislation. They are probably wrong however, as similar Spanish legislation has now been declared lawful by the European Court of Justice.

Personally I think it’s daft to have a policy that age discrimination is wrong, but then retaining all the old laws that say things like:

  • You can sack people because they’re 65;
  • You pay people a different minimum wage depending how old they are;
  • Older people get higher redundancy payments;
  • You have to be a certain age to drive HGV, etc.

…and a whole host of other things. As a society we are institutionally ageist, and the current position just pretends we’re not while still requiring people to discriminate.

Discrimination explained through the medium of dreadlocks

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on October 17, 2007
in Discrimination
. 1 Comment

In the recent case of Harris v NKL Automotive the Employment Appeal Tribunal had to decide whether or not a Rastafarian chauffeur, Mr Harris, had been discriminated against when he was told that his hair was too untidy for his job. Mr Harris made a number of claims, one of which was that given his religious beliefs required him to wear dreadlocks, the company’s policy requiring tidy hair was detrimental to Rastafarians. In this case he was unsuccessful at proving this, but had the company’s policy been so bold as to say “Dreadlocks are unacceptable” he may have had a very good case indeed.

This is a good example of indirect discrimination, and it seems worthwhile to describe the difference between direct discrimination and indirect discrimination. You can bring a discrimination claim based on (put simply):

  • Race / national origins;
  • Sex / married status;
  • Disability;
  • Sexual orientation;
  • Religion / belief;
  • Age.

To a lesser degree, there are some others, but they’re for another day. Direct discrimination is where you suffer a detriment at your employer’s hands due to one of the grounds above. You’ve not been promoted because you’re Asian, you’ve not been hired because you’re disabled, you’ve had the sack because you’re gay, and so on. The characteristic doesn’t have to be yours, however, it just has to be the reason behind the detriment. Sack me because my wife is Asian, or my son is gay, and my claim is still a good one (in real life I have neither wife nor son, or why would I be blogging at 11pm?). The action however is done to you personally, rather than just everyone.

Indirect discrimination is what the dreadlocked Harris complained about. That’s where you apply the same rules to everyone (so no direct discrimination), but they have a particularly bad effect on some people because of their characteristics. Let’s have some examples apart from Harris:

  • A company that provides security guards on buildings sites states in an advertisement that applicants need to be at least six feet tall.
  • A large supermarket states that it will in no circumstances offer part time checkout positions as this causes complications in organising a rota.

Both of these examples could give rise to a juicy tribunal claim for indirect discrimination. No-one is directly discriminating, no-one is being sacked just because they’re black, or disabled, or whatever. However, if your security guards have to be six feet tall, then it stands to reason most of your security guards will be… men. Women tend, presumably for evolutionary convenience, to be shorter than men, and are therefore unlikely to be able to apply to this job. What about the supermarket? Look around your own business. You will probably notice that most of the part-timers are… women of course. Although the breaking down of traditional gender roles remains relentless (my social life would attest to this), the fact is that most of the time women still get pregnant, have babies, then want to come back to work part-time so that they can earn some money but still pick up junior from playgroup and watch kid’s TV. Refuse to hire part-time and you make life much more difficult for women than you do for men.

If this seems a little inflexible, don’t worry. Unlike direct discrimination, indirect discrimination can be justified, and then you can get away with it. This is just common sense: some roles do need to be full time, some jobs can’t be done at any time other than the Sabbath, and you can forbid a Muslim teaching assistant from wearing a veil in class. But if in doubt, tread carefully. The security company and the supermarket above would be on thin ice indeed.

Ongoing changes

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on October 11, 2007
in Usefully Employed
. 0 Comments

I’m getting all my changes to this blog done now, while no-one’s reading it but me. I’ve just discovered that I’ve picked the exact same colour scheme as the excellent Magistrate’s Blog. He (or is it she?) was there first, so I’ve had to change.

Have a read:
http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/

UK Holiday Entitlements

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on October 11, 2007
in Working Time Regulations
. 0 Comments

So let’s get started! The new increase in holiday entitlements has caused much confusion. It’s bank holidays that cause the difficulty you see. Calling them bank holidays, public holidays, and worst of all statutory holidays gives people the understandable impression that they’re actually entitled to take them off. Not so. There is actually no legal entitlement to take any public holiday off at all. All the law says is that you’re entitled to so many paid days off in a year. Up until this month, it was 20. That just mean you had to be given 20 paid days off. Employers could count public holidays, Christmas day, the July shutdown, or whatever else into the total. So you get 20 days off plus public holidays? Well, lucky you, because your employer didn’t have to give it to you. In fact, they could have made you work on those days if they wanted.

Understandably, our entitlement to public holidays was a major campaigning point , and thus the government is increasing the minimum entitlement by eight days, to represent the eight public holidays. It’s being phased in, with an increase to 24 days from 1st October this year, and to 28 in 2009.

So you see why people get confused. From the start of this month I’ve received at least two dozen telephone calls like this:

“My employees get 20 days holiday, they reckon they’re entitled to
24 now!”

“Do you give them bank holidays on top of that?”

“Of course – I thought you had to!”

“Don’t worry, you’re fine as you are.”

Of course, I then go on to ask them about staff who work part time or have irregular hours, but if this applies to you, then you can work it out for yourself: http://snipurl.com/1s2cm

Actually, I realise I’m being lazy, so I’ll tell you. If you’re part time, but you work a regular number of days per week (e.g. three) then it’s easy. 24 days per year equals 4.8 weeks, so you just multiply your 3 days by 4.8 to get 14.5 days’ entitlement. You always round up to the nearest half day. In 2009 when it goes up to 28 days, this equals 5.6 weeks. If someone works completely irregular shifts, then it’s best to appoach it as a percentage - for every hour they work, they accrue 10.2% holiday. So, once they’ve worked 100 hours they’re entitled to 10 hours and twenty minutes paid holiday. No-one ever said it was going to be simple. For more examples, see here: http://www.berr.gov.uk/employment/holidays/faq/index.html

So how do we do for holiday in the UK? Employers I speak to vary in their views - I think most reckon the current leave entitlements to be about right. Some of course say it cripples their business. If you (or your employer) starts to fall into this frame of mind, then remember that even when the full 28 days comes in, we’ll still be joint bottom of EU countries. Workers in Germany get a whopping 39 days off each year, and only the Netherlands offer as little as we do. More here: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2859082.ece

So if you’re one of the significant minority who’ve enjoyed an increase, then I hope you have a good time wherever you’re going!

Welcome

Published
by
Usefully Employed
on October 8, 2007
in Usefully Employed
. 0 Comments

We spend more time at work than we do anywhere else, and let’s face it - sometimes work is interesting, sometimes it’s fun, and sometime we miss it when we don’t go. The other 95% of the time we struggle with our tasks, our bosses, and (for some of us) our employees.

As it says on the left, I have a job where I give advice to a lot of different people and organisations every day. I’ve just had a couple of weeks where:

  • perhaps every employer in the country has phoned to ask about the new laws on holidays and the minimum wage;
  • I’ve seen an employer refuse to follow a basic procedure which would have saved it £40,000;
  • I’ve seen an employee quit his job where if he’d hung on for a few more days he’d have either been redeployed or paid three months’ money to disappear.

What often unites workers and their bosses is complete cluelessness about how to get things done quickly, how not to lose money and, most importantly, how to make themselves happy.

So what will follow on this site is an occasional discussion on new laws, as well as discussion on common situations encountered in the workplace. I’ve a hectic life, so don’t expect daily updates, but I’m aiming for one medium sized post per week. Feel free to join in and comment, and of course, tell your friends.