Weekly issue 53 - December 2000

Suspensions damaging to your health

In this case a residential care worker obtained substantial damages from her employers following her wrongful suspension from work pending a Children Act investigation into allegations of abuse.

Redundancy pool dries up

The selection of pools for redundancy is always a hotly contested area. In this case a worker argued that his job was interchangeable and that he therefore should not have been selected for redundancy.

Date fixed in concrete

This case is a reminder of the risk of agreeing to hearing dates in the Tribunal, without first checking if all your witnesses are available.

Full pay for holidays

The schemes that employers think up for avoiding their obligation to pay for holidays are seemingly endless. Few, if any, work.

Assumed discrimination

In this case the Court of Appeal conclude that an employer was not guilty of sex discrimination in assuming that a female employee was to blame for an incident of sexual harassment of which she was the victim, and in then failing to deal properly with her complaint of harassment.

Knowing about disability

Recent Disability Discrimination Act decisions focus on the fundamental question of who is and who is not disabled, and also the extent to which an employer has to have knowledge of an employee's disability to be liable under the Act.

Putting a figure on it

Calculating compensation can be an imprecise science and one of the best guides to what particular forms of discrimination are worth can be gleaned from previous cases.

TUPE and the public sector

The European Court is still finding itself occupied with cases on TUPE and the Acquired Rights Directive.