A number of case law decisions on employment law may have an effect on you.
The first concerned a salesman whose salary was made up of a basic salary and a commission calculated on sales. When he went on holiday his employer calculated his holiday pay based only on his basic salary. The European Court of Justice has decided that holiday pay should put employees in the same position during their holiday as during their normal working week. Therefore, they said that commission should be taken into account when calculating holiday pay, although exactly how this should be done is up to the courts of each individual country.
The second concerns redundancy. An employer was required to make one of two employees redundant. They carried out an exercise to decide which employee should be made redundant. It was designed so that the higher scorer should be made redundant and one scored very slightly higher than the other. The lower scoring employee then offered to take voluntary redundancy but the employer decided that the redundancy should be made in accordance with the exercise. An Employment Tribunal decided that this was not a reasonable course of action and upheld a claim for unfair dismissal.
The third decision concerned sleeping on the job. A carer was paid a fixed fee of £40 per week for sleeping over for eight hours, when required, and she was invariably required to sleep over on at least two nights per week. This was in addition to her other pay. The Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled that it was irrelevant whether or not she had to do anything during these sleepovers. The job was simply being there and not the level of activity. Therefore, she was being paid below the minimum wage.
Finally, the Home Office has issued new guidelines on preventing illegal workings. The details is beyond the scope of this article but can be found at: CLICK HERE
Strangely, we always thought that border control was the responsibility of the government!
And finally, finally. If you were employed in the construction industry in the 1970’s or 1980’s then you may be entitled to a share of over £1m of unclaimed holiday pay. A client of ours made a simple phone call and received over £2,000. Full details are available in our article in “Village Life” and can also be accessed on the “Warrington Worldwide” website.
WatkinsonBlack are pleased to advise on these as well as other matters, including providing a very cost-effective payroll bureau service. If you want to arrange a no-obligation initial meeting on any taxation or accounting matter then please contact us.
Please note that these ideas are intended to inform rather than advise and you should always obtain professional advice before taking any action.
