LEGISLATION

Proposed Directive on Agency Workers:

There is some good news for employers with regard to the draft directive on temporary agency workers as the draft no longer requires that the terms and conditions of an agency worker be comparable to that of an employee in the user company. Instead it requires that agency workers should not be given less favourable working time rights and pay than would apply if they had been employed directly to do the same work by the user company.

TUPE

The Government has finally announced plans to amend the rules on the Transfer of Undertakings. It intends to carry out a public consultation on the draft revised transfer regulations in the first half of this year. The revised regulations are expected to be placed before Parliament in the Autumn, and to come into effect in Spring 2004.

Suggested reforms will:

• Provide more comprehensive coverage in respect of operations involving the contracting-out of services;
• Ensure that the new employer is better informed of the ongoing employment rights of the employees they take on;
• Clarify the circumstances in which employers can lawfully make transfer related dismissals and negotiate transfer related changes to terms and conditions of employment.;
• Introduce new flexibility in respect of insolvent businesses with the intention to promote the ‘rescue culture’ and save businesses and jobs that would otherwise be lost.

The draft regulations do not address the issue of the protection of occupational pension rights. These remain to be reviewed as part of the Government’s Green paper, “Pensions in the Workplace”.

Review of The Employment Relations Act 1999 (“ERA 1999”): The DTI has undertaken a review of the legislation and is considering the following changes:

• Clarifying the “right to be accompanied” in disciplinary and grievance procedures, to make it clear exactly when somebody has the right to a representative and enabling a right to appeal decisions to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) when this right is breached.
• Establishing a legal right for workers to access their union services.
• Allowing postal voting on union recognition votes.

Consultation ends on 22 May 2003.

Trade Union:

The DTI is consulting on the form of proposed regulations to prohibit the blacklisting of members of trade unions or trade union activists which may be introduced under s3 of ERA 1999.

The draft Regulations would render it unlawful to compile, sell, supply or use a black list, which has been compiled with a view to it being used by employers to discriminate in relation to the recruitment or retention of workers.

The draft Regulations can be viewed at: http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/erareview.htm

New Adoption Rights:

The DTI has published a guide providing details on the new law relating to the rights to leave and pay for adoptive parents (see Bite Size Dec 2002).

The guide can be viewed at: http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/individual/adoption-P1518.pdf

In addition, a full overview of the new maternity, paternity and adoptive leave and pay rights can be found in one of this month’s “Employment Angles” at:

http://www.cobbetts.co.uk/employment-18.html

Disability Statistics:

The Department for Work and Pensions has published a report on employment retention, following the onset of sickness or disability.

The report reveals that every quarter, 2.6% of the workforce become disabled within the definition of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), some 608,000 individuals.

However, only 0.3% of the workforce becomes disabled for the purpose of Social Security Benefits (73,000 individuals) which would seem to indicate that the Government applies a much more stringent standard to qualify for disability protection from it, than the standards it places on employers.