Employment law stories in the news – 17.10.2016 to 23.10.2016

redmans-blog-newsIn the latest of our series of posts on employment law stories in the news, we take a look at eight employment law-related stories that made headlines between 17 October 2016 and 23 October 2016

  1. Environmental services firm fined for safety failings – A Lancashire based environmental services company has been fined after a worker suffered serious injuries when his arm was crushed by machinery (HSE)
  2. Reading Borough Council urged to pay female staff ‘the money they are due’ – Reading Borough Council has been inundated with equal pay claims from 61 women who are owed more than £1.5 million, according to Unison. The ex-council employees, who were mostly care workers, cooks and administrators, were allegedly paid less than their male colleagues for years (Get Reading)
  3. Judge accuses VIP child abuse probe chief of sexual discrimination after she blamed an ex-royal protection officer for the Met Police’s ‘macho image’ – The woman police chief in charge of a discredited VIP child sex abuse probe has been accused of sexual discrimination by an employment judge. Pat Gallan crushed the career of a junior officer in an extraordinary row over the supposed ‘macho’ culture of a high-profile Met Police unit, a panel ruled (The Daily Mail)
  4. Ministers order HMRC crackdown on ‘gig economy’ firms – Ministers have ordered a crackdown on companies that use large numbers of self-employed or agency workers following an investigation by the Guardian into low pay at delivery company Hermes. The financial secretary to the Treasury, Jane Ellison, announced that HM Revenue and Customs was launching a specialist unit to investigate companies who opt out of giving workers employment protections by using agency staff or calling them self-employed (The Guardian)
  5. Skilled workers ‘may be exempt from immigration controls’: Hammond – The chancellor has indicated that highly skilled workers may be exempt from the government’s planned immigration controls. Philip Hammond said he could not see why firms should be restricted from recruiting “high level” workers (BBC)
  6. Self-employed earn less than they did 20 years ago – Britain’s self-employed workers are earning less than they did 20 years ago, according to data that expose the low incomes of many people in this growing part of the workforce (The Financial Times)
  7. Tesco faces legal action from staff in pay dispute – Tesco is facing legal action from staff who say they lost out on pay for working anti-social hours. The complaint is from 17 workers who are “extremely unhappy” at seeing their pay rates change for weekends, bank holidays and night shifts (BBC)
  8. ‘I was forced out of my £100k-a-year job because I became disabled’ – A disabled man was unfairly sacked from his £100,000-a-year job after being diagnosed with devastating multiple sclerosis (MS). Andy Davies, 51, from Woolton, was cruelly dismissed just days before Christmas as he came to terms with his disability (The Liverpool Echo)