Blog Posts: February 2010

An interesting article in the Times on the problems of overtime in the workplace. "We’ve had extreme fishing, extreme skiing and even extreme ironing. Now, however, the TUC has found that almost a million workers are spending hours every week on an activity that may give them no pleasure and certainly no reward — extreme overtime. More than five million professionals and managers in both the public and private sectors are working an average of seven hours a week without extra p....

The recent publication of Observer journalist, Andrew Rawnsley’s book The End of the Party has brought much interest in the conduct of Gordon Brown and others, including the National Bullying Helpline and its Chief Executive, Christine Pratt, and the journalist, Andrew Rawnsley.  It is time to step back. We are close to a general election, so the truth is not necessarily a priority for any of the parties. First of all the allegations. What are they? Gordon’s Brown abusive....

Lawyers acting on behalf of employee clients do not like alleging Constructive Dismissal but sometimes you have to do it. The reason why we do not like doing it is because the onus is on the employee to prove the dismissal. The law is if the employer is in fundmental breach of his obligations under the contract then the employee has the right to accept the breach by resigning and then claiming constructive dismissal. The biggest difficulty for the employee is to establish that the b....

This is well reported news but olne in four employers is planning to make redundancies in the first three months of 2010, a survey has revealed. Employers plan to cut an average of 6.2% of their workforce, according to the poll of 700 employers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). That is up 2.4% compared with the previous quarter, in which workforces were cut by an average of 3.8%. This signals the start of a public sector recession that will see deep cuts in public e....

An interesting article on the Personnel Today website about homophobia.   Discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation may be against the law, but many 'out' employees continue to experience homophobia in the workplace. Sophie Hudson investigates. Former teacher Sue Sanders spent much of 1989 vigorously campaigning on television against Section 28, the law banning councils and schools from intentionally promoting homosexuality. Little did she know it would result in her boss sidi....

Recently Emma Harte of Resolution wrote to the Law Society Gazette commenrting on the success of family cout based mediation. She observed. "The story ‘Family mediation pilot achieves mixed results’ (news, 7 January) suggested that court-based mediation in the pilot scheme had disappointing results. Given the context in which these mediations occurred, the opposite is true, and the pilot actually looks like a remarkable success story. The pilot involved cases that were so diff....

Increasingly Human Law Mediation is dealing with issues relating to elderly workers both in an employment law and a mediation capacity. My experience of conflict or a dispute is there are some fundamental dymanics which are the same. You have 2 or more different parties and there is some kind of problem e.g either the Employee has done something wrong or the Employer is just trying to ensure the business makes money and it wants to sack or discipline a member of staff. You....