Mills & Reeve: HR Law Live

Minister confirms timetable for employment law changes

The Government’s current timetable for implementing changes to the way workplace disputes are handled has been revealed in a written Parliamentary answer last week. We all know that the unfair dismissal qualifying period will increase to two years in April, but the timetable for the other planned changes had been unclear.

We now know that there will be some immediate changes to the way tribunals are run from April. Employment judges will be able to sit alone when hearing unfair dismissal claims and witnesses will no longer be paid their expenses by the Tribunals Service. There will also be changes to the limits for costs awards and deposit orders. However the planned radical overhaul of the employment tribunal rules of procedure will not happen until 2013.

There are plenty of other changes in the pipeline which require primary legislation (see for example our posting here). These include plans to enhance the role of ACAS and introduce financial penalties on employers. No precise timetable has been announced for these changes: they will be introduced “when parliamentary time allows”.

Record collective award for Woolworths workers

Following a similar decision in the Northern Ireland industrial tribunal last year, Woolworths workers in England, Wales and Scotland who were made redundant at the end of 2008 have been awarded 60-day protective awards. Around 30,000 workers were dismissed when the Woolworths went into administration, but as things stand only those working at the larger stores with 20 or more staff will receive an award. This is because the employment tribunal decided that each shop was a separate establishment for the purposes of the collective consultation provisions. Despite the scale of the redundancies across the country, it held that the obligations to consult were not triggered for the 3000 of so staff employed at the smaller shops. However it is likely that there will be an appeal against this element of the decision.

The main lesson for the future is that despite the scale and urgency of the task facing them, the tribunal ruled that the administrators could and should have done better. They left it too late to involve the unions and other workforce representatives. When they did call a consultation meeting insufficient time was allotted and the practical arrangements – with over 50 people joining the meeting on the phone – made it very difficult for proper dialogue to take place.

The total value of these protective awards is over £60 million, but because the company is insolvent, the National Insurance Fund will be picking up the bill.  Since there is statutory cap on payments out of the Fund, workers are unlikely to receive the full amount due to them.

Limits, rates and qualifying periods

We may still be in the dark about the timings of the numerous proposed amendments to employment law which are likely to take place before the end of 2012, but we do know about the following changes which will happen within the next three months:

• On 1 February 2012 the annual uprating of employment tribunal limits takes place  Most importantly the upper limit on a week’s pay rises to £430 and a new maximum unfair dismissal compensatory award of £72,300 will take effect.
• In April the weekly rates of statutory maternity, paternity and adoption leave pay will increase from £128.73 to £135.45 and there will also be a rise in the rate of statutory sick pay from £81.60 to £85.85
• April is also likely to be the effective date for the increase in the unfair dismissal qualifying period from one to two years.