HR Articles

From 6 April 2020, the law relating to employment contracts will change, requiring more information to be provided from day one and extending the entitlement to ALL employees AND workers. Is your organisation ready?

It is well understood that a recognised trade union can negotiate terms and conditions of employment, and that the outcome of negotiations is recorded in a collective agreement applicable to all staff in the trade union’s bargaining unit. However, the EAT has held that the terms of a collective agreement need to cover the same factual circumstances in an employee’s contract in order to be successfully incorporated.

Tillman v Egon Zehnder Ltd is due to be heard in the Supreme Court this week, serving as a reminder to employers about how carefully they must word a restrictive covenant.

In the recent case of Stefanko and others v Maritime Hotel Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that any employee engaged for a month or more is entitled to a written statement of terms in accordance with Section 1 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

The Supreme Court has recently confirmed in Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v Haywood that in the absence of any express provision in an employment contract, written notice of termination from an employer does not take effect until the employee has read it, or had a reasonable opportunity of doing so.

Data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that, as of June 2017, there were an estimated 883,000 people working under contracts that did not guarantee a minimum number of hours.

Italian law allows firms to offer ‘on call’ contracts (referred to as zero hour contracts in the UK) to individuals aged under 25 and over 45, those between 25 and 45 can only receive these contracts in limited circumstances.

In Egon Zehnder Ltd v Mary Caroline Tilman, the High Court upheld a restrictive covenant finding that it went no further than reasonably necessary in protecting the employer’s legitimate business interests.

In the recent case of Green v SIG Trading Ltd, the EAT held that the question of whether an employee has a sufficiently strong connection to the UK (to give a tribunal territorial jurisdiction to consider a claim) is an objective rather than a subjective test.

In McCann v Snozone Ltd, a verbal offer of employment made via a recruitment agency was sufficient to create a legally binding agreement between the individual and the employer, the subsequent withdrawal of which amounted to a breach of contract.