HR Articles

The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision in Bellman v Northampton Recruitment Limited and found that the company was liable for the acts of its managing director in a late-night drinking session. Following a staff Christmas party, an unplanned after-party took place at a hotel bar.

The Supreme Court has handed down its decision in the ‘gay cake’ case today, finding that a Christian Bakery had not acted unlawfully in refusing to provide a cake endorsing gay marriage. We have previously reported on the case of Lee v Ashers Baking Company and Others, both at the County Court and at the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal.

It has been reported this week that Google’s social media app, Google+, is to close down for consumers after it was revealed that a bug had exposed the personal data of up to 500,000 accounts. In a blog published by Google, it was revealed that a bug in the software meant that numerous third-party applications had access to up to 500,000 accounts.

Is one of the innovations of the gig economy the creation of a section of the workforce who can go on strike without risk or consequences?

There has been a steady stream of high profile cases about employment rights and the boundaries between categories of employment and self-employment in the modern economy, with particular focus on tech platforms providers like Uber. Largely (but not exclusively), the trend has been that those working in the gig economy have been found to be workers, rather than employees or people running their own micro businesses.

Last week saw the launch of a new guide aimed at assisting and supporting those who battle mental health issues in the workplace. The guide has been compiled by the CIPD, the UK’s leading professional body for HR and people development, and Mind, the longstanding mental health charity. CIPD’s recent ‘Health and Well-Being at Work’ report, produced in partnership with Simplyhealth, showed increases in work-related stress and mental health.

Following a campaign by the Liberal Democrats, suggesting that employers with over 250 employees be obliged to share their parental leave policies, ten major employers (including Deloitte and RBS) have agreed to publish their parental leave and pay policies. The research cited to support this campaign included a survey by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, which concluded that as many as 54,000 women a year lose their jobs due to either pregnancy or maternity discrimination.

As the UK hospitality industry suffers disruption by disgruntled workers it is a timely reminder that there is a large UK population of workers who are feeling exploited by the gig economy and lack of employment rights.

The Ministry of Justice has published tribunal statistics for April – June 2018. Readers will be aware that tribunal caseloads have increased steadily since the abolition of tribunal fees in July 2017. That trend continues in the latest report.

As recently reported in the media, the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) has issued its first Enforcement Notice under the Data Protection Act 2018 (“DPA 2018”) against AggregateIQ Data Services Ltd (“AIQ”), a Canadian data analytics company. AIQ was associated with targeted advertising for the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign during the Brexit referendum.