In July last year, fees were introduced for employees to bring claims and the Ministry of Justice has just published Tribunal statistics for October to December 2013 (the first full quarter since the introduction of the fees) which show that in that time, employment tribunals received 79% fewer claims than the same quarter in 2012 and 75% fewer than in the previous quarter. READ MORE
TODAY is a big day for employment law. Even though many of you will be thinking about your holidays, or may have even jetted off to sunny shores, take care to remember that certain changes are taking place which will affect your standard document and how you handle any exiting employees. Read more.
In the recent UK case of Smith v. Trafford, the Claimant was awarded just £98 (approx. $150) by the English High Court for a successful breach of contract claim against his housing trust employer (the “Trust”). The Claimant, Mr. Smith, had posted two comments on his Facebook wall expressing his views on gay marriage. One comment stated “equality too far” and the other comment elaborated on his reasons for opposing gay marriage. In the Trust’s view, Mr. Smith’s comments amounted to a serious breach of its Code of Conduct and Equal Opportunities Policy. He had a significant number of colleagues as his Facebook friends and the Trust was concerned that his personal views would be interpreted as its own. Consequently, the Trust found Mr. Smith guilty of gross misconduct but rather than dismissing him, demoted Mr. Smith to a non-managerial position with a resulting 40 percent reduction in his pay. READ MORE
Welcome to the first edition of Orrick World: A Quarterly Report of Global Employment Law Issues for Multinationals. We have designed this newsletter to provide our multinational clients with quarterly updates on important employment law issues across the globe.
