Employment Law

In March 2014 ACAS launched ‘The Equality Act 2010 – Guidance for Employers’ setting out simple guidelines employers should follow. This forms part of their reconciliation

1.3 The legislation relating to equality, diversity and inclusion, stems both from UK government and European union. It offers protection from discrimination on grounds of age, disability, gender, race and ethnic origin, religious faith or belief and sexual orientation. The legislation has implications on all workplaces, in terms of employment practice and in terms of the services provided. Compliance with the legislation must be embedded in your Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies.

The Equality Act 2010 makes your rights not to be discriminated against stronger. Discrimination means treating someone less privileged other people because of who they are.

A medical office needs to be compliant with employment laws; this will ensure they do not have lawsuits that could patiently put a company out of business. This also helps the offices run smoothly and free from errors. There are several employment laws a few of them are the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The American with Disabilities (ADA) is when an employer is to provide reasonable accommodation to an employee with a known mental or physical limitation, or a qualified individual with a

The Equality Act 2010 is an updated law aimed at an attempt to stop discrimination and to help try encourage equality throughout society. The care environment should benefit from this improved equality act by ensuring certain groups of people within the healthcare who receive a worse service compared to the rest of the community receive equal opportunities. Under the Equality Act 2010, individuals are formally protected against the harm of discrimination on the grounds of their age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity status, race, religion or belief, and sex and sexual orientation.

Employers have legal obligations, when drawing up a job description. The law states that employers must not discriminate against a persons, age, race, sex, religion or disability.

Facts of the case: Imagine you are an HR manager and your boss and owner of the company, Bill, comes to you suspecting his assistant, Paige, is stealing money from the company. Bill would like a polygraph test conducted to see if Paige is stealing from the company. He would also like you to conduct electronic surveillance on Paige’s work e-mail for anything suspicious.

The aim of this early conciliation is to encourage as many cases as possible to settle ‘compromising’ the claim through a settlement agreement (previously called a ‘compromise agreement’) an agreement achieved through Acas conciliation (a ‘COT3’). Appendix 3 is an early conciliation Flow Chart (ACAS)

In the UK most employment law is considered as a civil or private law and is enforced as a result of one party suing another. The primary outcomes sought is usually that of compensation. Cases brought before the court are generally made by a former or existing employee or a failed job applicant and they use the courts system to allege that their employer has in some way caused a detriment and has done this in contravention on the law.

The definition of 'employee' and 'worker' differs slightly from one area of legislation to another, but generally workers have less rights

However, it can hear almost every employment law matter since its jurisdiction increased. Before 1994, Employment Tribunals could only hear statutory claims while after the Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) Order 1994, Employment Tribunals' role has drastically changed that they can now hear common law claims(Richard Kinder,1999). But there are some law matters of common law they cannot cope with like matters relating to moral tights and copyright, patents, designs rights, trade marks; breach of restraint of trade covenants; breach of confidence; breach of a contract terms requiring the employer to provide for the employee; personnel injury claims. From this regard, certain employment matters still have to be tackled in the civil courts.

It is certainly true that the current law defining the employment status of ‘workers’ is uncertain, as it is wholly inflexible to deal effectively with cases of non-standard forms of employment, atypical workers, for example: agency workers, part-time workers, fixed-term workers, as required workers and homeworkers. Thus, reform is necessary to redress the concerns of lack of legal certainty in relation to this area of the law.

The employment affiliation can be complex, with no quick and easy method to use which will provide an instant answer. When collecting information from the parties in regards to their work association, the inspector/health and safety officer must keep in mind that the numerous tests are not tests in and of themselves, but rather circumstances outlined in jurisprudence. They may be given more or less credence in a particular case to establish if a worker is simply part of the payer's business or in business on his or her own account (Determining the Employer/Employee Relationship - IPG-069, 2012).

The employment status has always been lying on the heart of the UK labour law. It is the most fundamental jurisdictional point as the status of an individual is very significant for legal and financial reasons. Most importantly the status of an employee will enable one to enjoy the statutory protections rights but not for the independent contractors.

The main purpose of this report is to distinguish and provide evidence to the fact that Anne Parish, a former employee at Ace Accident Insurance in Cairns was treated unfair by her former employer. In employment relations all employees should be treated and remunerated fairly, irrespective of them being an independent contractor or an employee (Fair Work Act, 2009).