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 New Employment Laws 05 June 2003 A range of new employment laws came into effect on 6 April 2003. These relate to maternity, paternity and adoption leave and pay, flexible working, and equal pay. These include: • The rate of maternity pay has increased to £100 per week; there is a new right to two weeks' paid paternity leave; adoption leave and pay is now available; • Ordinary maternity leave has been extended to 26 weeks and additional • Maternity leave extended to end 26 weeks from the end of ordinary maternity leave. • Parents of children under 6 or disabled children under 18 have the right to request flexible working. The regulations provide a format and procedure for written requests, and a response. Do take care to read the regulations or take advice before acting on a request. There is a new ACAS arbitration scheme specifically for disputes flexible working cases, as an alternative to Tribunals. • Forms to be used by employees to question an employer in an equal pay claim and by employers to respond have been changed. In some circumstances they may now force disclosure of other employees' salaries in response to a claim of unequal pay. The reasonably good news is that the DTI has agreed to set 6th April and 1st October as the two dates each year when domestic employment regulations come into effect, so at least there will be some predictability of the times when change may be expected. Also, from next January, the DTI will publish an annual statement of forthcoming employment regulation. However the bad news is that there are already exceptions to this attempt at minimising the process of constant change • The annual increase in compensation limits will still happen on 1st February, and • EC Directives will be implemented on a 'case-by case' basis. For those who have employees based abroad, a new Employment Appeal Tribunal decision may have dramatic effect. An English company had an employee based in Ascension Island, he was managed there, not here, and he did not pay UK tax. Nevertheless it was held that the tribunal in England could hear claims for constructive dismissal and under the Working Time Regulations by employees based abroad even though these laws may not otherwise apply in the country where the worker is based, and even if the contract says otherwise. |
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