An 83-year-old shop assistant who was sacked for leaving his till open while he dealt with a customer has won his claim of unfair dismissal. Ivor Smith had worked for B&Q in Glasgow for 12 years. In August 2014, a customer asked him for change of £200 in coins. He left his till open for
There were several important developments in employment law in 2015. These are some of the most significant. Travel time can be ‘work time’ The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that if employees don’t have a fixed place of work then the time they spend travelling from home to their first job of the day
A sub-contractor has won its appeal that workers who were temporarily laid off while employed on a building project should still qualify to be transferred to a new firm under TUPE regulations. The sub-contractor had been engaged by a construction company to work on a large contract. It assigned a number of workers to carry
The government has announced the latest measures in its campaign to eradicate the gender pay gap within a generation and to provide more opportunities in the workplace for women and ethnic minorities. Legislation to prevent discrimination and promote equality has been in place for more 40 years but women still earn less on average than
A woman who was brought over from India to work in Britain for as little as 11p an hour has been awarded £184,000. It’s thought to be the first successful case in the UK involving “low caste” discrimination. Permila Tirkey and her family are Adivasi people from Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. They are
A company that sacked an employee who made abusive comments on Facebook and claimed he’d been drinking on duty had not acted unfairly. That was the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in the case of Scottish Canals and one of its employees. The issue arose after the employee posted comments that he had been
The government has outlined plans to end the pay gap between men and women within a generation. It says the first step is the introduction of the living wage, which will be set at £7.20 per hour from April 2016 and rise to more than £9 per hour by 2020. This will be particularly helpful
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has provided a ruling clarifying how long an employee is entitled to wait before taking annual leave accrued while he was off work due to illness. The case involved an employee who had been absent on sick leave from April 2010 until his employment ended in February 2014. In July
An employee who was sacked over a risqué photo that he posted on Facebook has won his claim of unfair dismissal. The case involved 31-year-old Faisal Auld who had worked for the company Norbert Dentressangle for 10 years. In 2009 he had posted a photo of himself holding a work colleague in a headlock in
The time that workers who don’t have a fixed workplace spend travelling from home to their first job of the day counts as work time, according to the European Union’s Advocate General. The same principle applies to the time spent travelling back home after the last job of the day. The issue arose out of