Employment law stories in the news – 18.06.2018 to 24.06.2018

In the latest of our series of posts on employment law stories in the news, we look at ten employment law-related stories that have made headlines between 18 June 2018 and 24 June 2018

  1. Company fined after admitting safety failures – An Inverurie company has been fined after a teenage worker was seriously injured. Aberdeen Sherriff Court heard that 17-year-old Michael Paul Mark Mclean was found seriously injured at the premises of Denholm MacNamee Limited on 14 August 2015 (HSE)
  2. Deliveroo’s hiring conditions to face scrutiny by MPs – Deliveroo is facing a parliamentary inquiry into the pay and conditions of its couriers in the latest challenge to the gig economy. Frank Field MP, chairman of the work and pensions committee, which has already taken evidence from workers at Hermes, Uber, DPD and Parcelforce, will now gather evidence from Deliveroo riders over the next five weeks (The Guardian)
  3. New judges to be hired to tackle employment case backlog – More than 50 new judges are to be recruited to help deal with a growing backlog of cases going through the employment tribunal system. The courts have been struggling to deal with a surge in new employment cases since last July, when the Supreme Court ruled that workers should not be charged fees for bringing lawsuits against their employers (The Financial Times)
  4. Records disclosure challenge reaches the Supreme Court – Human rights campaign group Liberty hopes the government will be defeated a third time over what it calls a ‘disproportionate’ criminal records disclosure regime. The Supreme Court today begins hearing a challenge to rules requiring anyone with multiple convictions, no matter how minor, to disclose them to future employers (The Law Society Gazette)
  5. Car dealership that passed off racial slurs as ‘banter’ loses discrimination claim – A car dealership that dismissed racist language used against one of its employees as “banter” has lost claims for direct racial discrimination and victimisation at Birmingham employment tribunal (People Management)
  6. Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions Ltd fined half a million pounds after exposing workers to debilitating condition – Contractor Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions Ltd. has been sentenced today after exposing workers to a debilitating health condition over a nine-year period. Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions Ltd was fined £500,000 after the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that workers at the company were exposed to hand-arm vibration between 2002 and 2011 which put them at risk of developing Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS) (HSE)
  7. Bangor woman gets £25,000 payout in pregnancy case – A County Down woman who took a sex discrimination case against her employer related to her pregnancy has been paid £25,000 in a settlement. Ruth Faulkner, from Bangor, had worked at Intern Europe Ltd since June 2010 as a work placements officer (BBC)
  8. Report finds 40% of women face discrimination in sport jobs – Research from Women in Sport has found 40% of women in the sports industry say they face discrimination because of their sex but 72% of their male colleagues say they see no inequality (The Guardian)
  9. Sainsbury’s employee dismissed for Facebook post wins case – A former Sainsbury’s employee was unfairly dismissed after an investigation into whether he had committed an act of gross misconduct was not approached with an open mind, an employment tribunal has found. Mr D Kurmajic was dismissed by the company in May 2017 after he posted details about a driver who had used the supermarket’s car park – including his name, age, car registration number and address – on Facebook (Personnel Today)
  10. UK tribunal slams RBC for firing whistleblower and ‘totally unacceptable’ behaviour – The Royal Bank of Canada acted in a “totally unacceptable” way when it fired a whistleblower without due process on the pretext he was too often late for work, a U.K. tribunal judge has found (Canada National Observer)