Courts says 'work for your benefit' scheme not slave labour

R (on behalf of Reilly & Wilson) v Department of Work and Pensions saw Article 4 ECHR and the following question considered: Is it slave labour and therefore unlawful to force an individual in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance to participate in a 'work for your benefit' scheme?

Miss Reilly was a geology graduate who was required to work in Poundland for two weeks and Mr Wilson was a HGV driver who was required to work for an organisation delivering refurbished furniture to the needy in the community for 30 hours per week for a period of 26 weeks.. Both were required to do this if they were to receive their benefits.

Both Claimants claimed this amounted to a breach of Article 4. The outcome was that  such schemes could not be said to amount to 'slavery' or 'forced labour'.

Reduction in Judges' salaries leads to judicial retention warning

Reduction in Judges' salaries leads to judicial retention warning



The combination of a three-year pay freeze and pension cuts “is likely to cause judicial retention and recruitment problems,” the Lord Chief Justice has warned as a pay freeze has reduced judges' salaries by up to 18 per cent.



The LCJ said in his report for the period January 2010 to June 2012 that the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) had calculated that the pay of circuit judges had been cut by 15.9 per cent.

The salaries of district judges had fallen by 16.5 per cent, the report found, High Court judges by 17.1 per cent and lord justices of appeal by 18.4 per cent.

Judges’ pensions were assessed by the SSRB as amounting to 34 per cent of their total reward.

“In relation to pensions, as elsewhere in the public sector, a contribution liability has been imposed, further reducing take-home pay,” Lord Judge said.

“The extent to which the government seeks to reduce the annual accrual value of benefits under the judicial pension schemes is unknown. Whatever it is, it will reduce the total reward of a judge still further.”

 Lord Judge said in the report, published last week, that the “morale, recruitment and retention of judges of the highest calibre depends in part on the adequacy of their financial reward.”

He said the SSRB had said it was increasingly concerned about the morale and motivation of its ‘remit groups’ because of the deterioration in their terms and conditions.

“This observation is self-explanatory,” Lord Judge said. “The cumulative effect is likely to cause judicial recruitment and retention problems.”

In The Solicitor's Journal he said:

“Consequent constraints have affected and will continue to affect every aspect of national life, and the administration of justice is not, and has not, been immunised from the economic crisis.”

Sick worker who could not take 4 weeks holiday was not required to ask

In NHS Leeds v Larner the Court of Appeal has held that a worker who was unable to take four weeks’ annual leave due to sickness did not have to make a request to carry the untaken leave over into the next leave year in order to receive a payment in lieu of it on termination of employment. 

In recent cases it has been suggested that a Cliamnat was not entitled to payment in lieu if they had not requested the leave before the end of the leave year. This too was the argument submitted by NHS Leeds but rejected by the courts.

The European Court of Justice’s decision in Pereda v Madrid Movilidad SAestablished that a worker who is on sick leave during a period of previously scheduled annual leave has the right to take that leave at another time. 'Pereda' was applied to the instant case, L had not had the opportunity during the leave year 2009/10 to take her annual leave. L was thus entitled to carry over her leave entitlement under Reg 13 WTR to the following year without having to make a formal request. The right to be paid for that annual leave crystallised on the termination of her employment. She was therefore entitled to be paid for the annual leave which she had not been able to take in the leave year 2009/10. NHS Leeds appealed again.

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ACAS issues Olympics guidance for employers

ACAS issues Olympics guidance for employers

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) has issued guidance for employers on some of the issues that might arise in connection with the London 2012 Olympic Games, which commence on 27 July. Questiions such as how do you avoid disruption? are broached.

They say on a very useful website:

Everyone is working together to make the Olympic and Paralympic Games a great success. Employers should now be considering more flexible working arrangements, how they might minimise potential disruption and manage staff expectations to ensure business runs smoothly .

Employees are split into volunteers, spectators and those watching TV from home - more.

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Part-time judges should receive pensions, Supreme Court rules

UK regulations on the rights of part-time workers, which implement the EU’s part-time workers directive, currently exclude part-time judges because they are ‘office holders’. The Supreme Court has followed the invitation from Luxembourg to consider part-time judges as 'workers'.

UK regulations on the rights of part-time workers, which implement the EU’s part-time workers directive, currently exclude part-time judges because they are ‘office holders’. In March, the European Court of Justice said in Case C-393/10 O’Brien v Ministry of Justice that such exclusion would only be lawful if the relationship between judges and the Ministry of Justice was “by its nature substantially different from that between employers and their employees falling under the category of workers”.

Holding judicial office was “insufficient in itself” to exclude judges from the protection in the directive, the court went on, as it proceeded to list the factors the Supreme Court should consider when assessing whether the exclusion could be justified. Just because part-time judges and recorders retained the opportunity to practise as barristers didn’t mean they weren’t “in a comparable situation” to full-time judges, the court found, as they performed “essentially the same activity”.

The case was brought by Dermod O’Brien QC, who sat as a recorder for 27 years and was refused a pension when he retired in 2005.

The Supreme Court has decided not to remit the case to the employment tribunal and consider remaining points of fact at a further hearing on the appeal on 21 November. The Justices agreed that this was because there are no “significant disputed issues of fact to be determined” .

Lawyers trade blows with MPs over ACAS conciliation scheme today

A panel of emplyment lawyers have traded blows with MPs today over controversial plans to introduce a new formulaic scheme involving, ACAS forms and prescribed deadlines.

Early compulsory conciliation, as proposed in the Enterprise and Regulatory Bill, will not ease the burden on tribunals or make the resolution of employment disputes easier, a group of MPs heard this morning.

Firstly, a panel of employment experts were keen to contradict the assertion in the bill that that employment claims were rising.

John Morris, senior partner at Carlisle firm Burnetts and part-time employment judge since 2000, said this was not supported by evidence. Statistics provided at a recent meeting with ACAS and the Tribunals Service showed that the number of tribunals had fallen year on year, except for multiple claims, equal pay and airline disputes. The other two employment law specialists on the panel, Stephen Miller, of McRoberts, and Simpson Millar’s Joy Drummond, agreed.

Responding to the suggestion by Iain Wright, Labour MP for Hartlepool, that “everybody seemed to agree that early conciliation was a good idea”, Drummond said the difficulty was not so much on the principle – including making the step mandatory – but in the method proposed in the bill. As currently drafted, she said, the proposed rules were “unnecessary complicated, would lead to more litigation, more costs and management time for employers, not to mention placing additional hurdles in front of claimants with a valid claim”.

Drummond said the new rules would replace the current process involving one form within one time limit, which the tribunal sends to ACAS for possible conciliation, with two forms and two different time limits. “I can see all sorts of problems with that, both evidential and legal,” she commented.

She told MPs that the now-repealed and much-maligned disciplinary and grievance procedures that had to be followed before a claim could be brought to a tribunal and generated satellite litigation, would “look like a picnic” in comparison.

The panel of experts agreed with Andrew Bridgen, Conservative MP for West Leicestershire, that the tribunal procedure had become more complex, but ascribed this to the fact that the law had become more complicated.

She accepted that small businesses had particular problems, “but in my experience the people who are most in needs of basic employment rights are often the most low paid, and they tend to be employed by small businesses”.

“Small businesses are not always angels,” she went on. “As an employer you have responsibilities – yes, that has to be balanced against being able to run a business and to hire people, but one of my fears with this bill is that in trying to encourage small businesses to employ it will lay traps for unsuspecting employers.”

Instead, she asked: “Is it not more responsible for the government to educate businesses about the traps and how they should behave rather than participate in and legislate on the basis of a myth?”

Drummond also criticised an amendment tabled earlier this week on protected offers and settlement agreements, saying it contained major flaws: their narrow scope – unfair dismissal – and the introduction of a test of ‘improper’ action for which there was no definition in employment law.

Julian Smith, Conservative MP for Skipton and Ripon, said he felt as if he were “part of a Grimms fairytale with the employers being cast as the big bad wolf; it is highly biased evidence from many of you”.

The committee is expected to report by 17 July.

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