Paid Holiday Entitlement

All full time workers are now entitled to 28 days annual leave (previously 24 days). Part-time workers get a pro-rata increase. There is no obligation to allow time off for bank holidays as these are included within the 28 days. Employers who employ part-time workers need to be careful that such employees all receive equal amounts of leave since those working on Mondays may receive more holidays than those working other days. Employers may require Monday workers to allocate a day of such annual leave to a bank holiday to address the situation.

ACAS Code

Following the abolition of the statutory grievance procedures there is a new ACAS code. The principal changes are:-

• It is not essential for employees to raise a grievance before commencing ET proceedings, but failure to do so may result in a reduction of an award of up to 25%.
• There is no longer the possibility of extending the three month deadline to issue in the Employment Tribunal by raising a grievance – so the old three month deadline is back.
• The code only applies to disciplinary matters so doesn’t cover redundancies.
• It is no longer an automatic dismissal for an employer to fail to comply with any relevant procedure and it will no longer be an automatic unfair dismissal merely because the employer used an unfair procedure, if the use of a fair procedure would lead to the same result.
• The code applies to warnings as well as dismissals so employers should now be prepared to allow appeals against disciplinary warnings.
• Disciplinary / grievance hearings - an employer has a statutory right to be accompanied by a work colleague or trade union official, but unless the charges are grave or complex no right to legal representation.

Redundancy

A recent case has held that a “first in first out” approach may be discriminatory – because younger employees tend to have less service.
Length of service can however be a factor – on the basis of rewarding loyalty and achieving a stable work force – but it should not be the sole criteria to use.

Tips

From 1st October tips paid through the payroll will not count for the purposes of the minimum wage (currently £5.73 per hour for those over 22 – to be raised on 1st October 2009 to £5.80). The current situation is that tips paid through the payroll do count for minimum wage purposes but tips not paid through the payroll do not count.

Richard March 

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