Ask an Ealing Expert

More developments in Employment Law from our Ealing expert, Louise Taft

Related Links

Louise Taft represents employees and employers in Unfair Dismissal, Discrimination, Whistleblowing and other Employment cases.


She regularly appears in Employment Tribunals and has acted on cases in Employment Appeal Tribunal and Court of Appeal.
Participate

Are you an expert in your field who lives/works in Ealing? Care to share your knowledge? Get in touch with us at editor@ealingtoday.co.uk

Sign up for our free newsletter

Comment on this story on the Ealing forum

Dismissal was Age Discrimination

The Employment Appeal Tribunal have confirmed that an employer who dismisses an employee in order to avoid them reaching the age where they are entitled to a pension, is committing age discrimination.

In this case, the employee reached the end of a secondment 6 months before he became entitled to receive a pension. The Tribunal found that the employer dismissed rather than redeploying him in order to avoid the cost of his becoming entitled to a pension. That was held to be age discrimination.

Sick workers entitled to holiday on return to work

There’s been a lot of controversy over a European Court decision confirming that workers who are sick during pre-booked holiday are entitled to postpone that holiday and take it when they have returned to work.

Mr Pereda, the Claimant in this case suffered an accident rendering him unfit for work around 2 weeks before he was due to take holiday. He remained unfit for work throughout the period. The European Court held that the time he spent off sick did not count towards his right to paid holiday under the Working Time Regulations, notwithstanding that he had pre-booked this time.

This comes only a few months after the European Court held that sick workers were entitled to be paid in respect of holiday they had accrued but had not been able to take due to sickness when their employment was terminated.
Rather predictably, employers’ organisations are not happy with the judgment! Is it a malingerer’s charter or simply a reflection that employees too sick to work are often also too sick to enjoy their holiday?

Maternity Leave to be Transferable to Fathers

The Government has confirmed proposals to allow mothers to transfer the second half of their maternity leave, 3 months of which will be paid, to the father. What was not announced may be just as important: proposals to extend paid maternity leave to 12 months appear to have been shelved.
Quite how businesses, especially small businesses, are going to administer this is not clear: the father will only have the right to the leave if the mother returns to work. Another question will be how many men will take up the opportunity; it seems only feasible for those who earn significantly less than their partners as whilst SMP is available for 3 months, this is significantly less than the average wage.
I look forward to seeing the detail!

September 23, 2009