Employment law stories in the news – 17.09.2018 to 23.09.2018

In the latest of our series of posts on employment law stories in the news, we take a look at ten employment law stories that have made headlines between 17 September 2018 and 23 September 2018

  1. Company fined after worker suffers life-changing injury – Timberline DIY Limited has today been sentenced after an employee injured three of his fingers while cleaning a band re-saw (HSE)
  2. Jeremy Corbyn at Labour Party conference: we will put workers on company boards – Companies will have to hand one-third of the seats on their boards to their workers if Labour wins the next election, under radical plans unveiled today by Jeremy Corbyn (The Times)
  3. Minimum wage: Workers underpaid by record £15.6m – A record £15.6m worth of underpayment to UK workers has been discovered by the government in the past year. In total, 200,000 workers missed out on being paid at least the minimum wage rate – the highest number since the statutory rate was introduced in 1999 (BBC)
  4. Barclays faces fresh whistleblowing concerns: ‘I would not trust the process’ – An extensive investigation by Financial News into the treatment of employees who blew the whistle on potential wrongdoing at Barclays has raised questions about the process of speaking up at one of the UK’s largest banks (Financial News London)
  5. Citizens Advice employee unfairly dismissed, tribunal rules – The tribunal ruled that the Citizens Advice Staffordshire South West employee of 10 years was unfairly dismissed, but rejected claims of age and disability discrimination (The Third Sector)
  6. Ofgem exploited national security law to silence us, whistleblowers claim – Britain’s energy regulator has been fighting to keep secret the claims of two whistleblowers who independently raised concerns about potentially serious irregularities in projects worth billions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal (The Guardian)
  7. Media director found personally responsible for money owed to axed journalists – A Cornwall media director has been found personally liable to pay money owned to employees after he spent £1 to purchase a news organisation they were made redundant from before he acquired it (Cornwall Live)
  8. Staff sacked for blowing whistle on safety dodges in building trade – Whistleblowers are being sacked and threatened with violence for trying to shed light on life-threatening malpractice in the construction trade, industry leaders have said (The Times)
  9. Poundworld employees launch employment tribunal claim – Over 180 former Poundworld employees are calling for compensation following the retailers collapse, alleging that it failed to consult with them before making mass redundancies (Retail Gazette)
  10. Sacked Dumfriesshire hotel boss awarded £39,000 in unfair dismissal case – A grandmother who was sacked from her job after her husband and employer fell out, has been awarded nearly £40,000 by an employment tribunal (The Daily Record)