Thorneycroft News for April 2021

We are delighted to announce that Thorneycroft Solicitors will be supporting the Drive-in Cinema for The Christie, a charity event that will help raise funds for The Christie Charitable Fund.

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We are proud to be able to give back to our local community by donating a number of laptops to two local schools here in Macclesfield and Managing Director, Rachel Stow recently appeared on Cheshire’s Silk 106.9 to discuss the donation as well as our new offices, which are also located in the heart of Macclesfield.

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The National Living Wage (previously known as the national minimum wage) increased from 1 April to £8.91, the equivalent of more than £345 a year for a full-time employee.

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Remote working has hidden employees from sight, causing some employers to worry about what their staff are doing during working hours. The Guardian has reported that one of the world’s biggest call centre companies is planning to install surveillance systems to monitor what their staff are doing, whether that’s working, eating or going to the toilet. Teleperformance, which employs 380,000 staff in 34 countries, works for big names in Britain such as the government, NHS Digital, Vodafone, Aviva and the Guardian itself. The article says that there is nothing to suggest that these companies know about this surveillance plan and Teleperformance has now indicated that surveillance will not be rolled out in the UK. Teleperformance has said that the surveillance plans evolved from employees saying that they felt isolated while working at home.

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Employers must not discriminate against workers on the grounds of their religion or religious beliefs. In Page v NHS Trust Development Authority, the Court of Appeal has looked at whether an employee can be fairly dismissed for the way he expressed his beliefs, rather than the beliefs themselves.

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Employers dread receiving a claim form citing claims which have no teeth and ‘fishing’ for more information from the employer to inform their claims. Often, these claims lack any merit at all. But in some cases, getting hard data to back up anecdotal evidence can be impossible for an employee, especially when it comes to closely guarded information about pay. The EAT has recently looked at a request for supporting data in relation to an equal pay claim. This case sits against the backdrop of extensive mass equal pay litigation in recent times, originally in the public sector, for women in predominantly female roles who claim they do work of equal value to predominantly male roles within a business. Most recently, this mass litigation has moved into the private sector and supermarkets like Asda, Co-op and Sainsbury’s.

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The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has considered two cases involving workers on standby and whether the whole of the standby period should be considered working time. The Working Time Directive says that working time is any period where the employee is working, at the employer’s disposal and carrying out their duties. A rest period is any period which is not working time. The CJEU has previously found that standby time can be working time if the employee must be physically at the workplace (or another place determined by the employer) and able to provide services immediately if required. Another case, Ville de Nivelle v Matzak, said time spent by firefighters on standby at home was working time because they were required to be at home by the employer and to respond within 8 minutes. This put significant constraint on what they could do in terms of social and personal interests during that time.

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It is commonplace to negotiate severance terms before an employee leaves employment due to redundancy. Discussions usually agree the sums to be paid and formal settlement agreements are signed to create a clean break between the parties. The EAT has recently looked at a case where the parties had different ideas about what had been agreed, as well as what could be enforced.

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In 2017, in the case of King v Sash Windows, the CJEU established that a worker can carry over unlimited annual leave which they have been prevented from taking because the employer refuses to pay for it.

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The Supreme Court has given the final word on whether workers should get paid the national minimum wage for sleeping.

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