Employment Tribunal (ET)

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COVID-19 has thrown up numerous and multi-varied concerns for employers and employees alike. One notable area of consideration and concern has been the delicate and difficult issue of dismissals related to health and safety reasons. A recent case has shed more light on how Tribunals may deal with the pandemic-related workplace issue of employees’ refusal to work on health and safety grounds, due to fear of COVID-19.

Rodgers v Leeds Laser Cutting Limited ET/1803829/2020

Case Facts

This case considered the availability and legitimacy of fears over exposure to/contracting COVID-19 at work acting as grounds for statutory protection against unfair dismissal.

The Claimant refused to come into work after another colleague began to show symptoms of COVID‑19, and self-isolated. He informed the Respondent that he would not return to work until lockdown eased, as he was concerned for his very young child, who has sickle cell disease. After a month of refusing to attend work, the Respondent was dismissed.

The Claimant did not have sufficient service to claim ordinary unfair dismissal, so instead claimed that he had been automatically unfairly dismissed for exercising his rights to leave the workplace and take steps to protect himself where he reasonably believed there was a serious and imminent danger, under sections 100(1)(d) and (e) of the Employment Rights Act 1996.
Continue Reading COVID-19, health and safety and dismissal

In the long-running case of Asda Stores v Brierley and others, the Supreme Court ruled that, for the purposes of an equal pay claim, a group of female retail store employees could rely upon the work of mainly male depot distribution employees for comparison even though they are located at different sites.

Generally speaking, an equal pay claim can only progress if the claimant can establish a disparity between their contractual terms and those of an appropriate comparator of the opposite sex performing equal work at either:

  • the same establishment; or
  • a different establishment where “common terms” apply either generally or between the individual and their comparator.

Continue Reading Equal pay: Comparators in different establishments

Does pay for regular voluntary overtime need to be included in the calculation of holiday pay? Yes, says the Court of Appeal in a decision which confirms several prior Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decisions that the entitlement to holiday pay under the Working Time Directive (WTD) must include pay for regular voluntary overtime. As we explain below, the outcome is more complex in practice as tribunals will now have to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether a particular pattern of voluntary overtime is sufficiently regular and settled to fall within the category of regular voluntary overtime.

Background

Under article 7 of the WTD, EU member states must ensure that workers have the right to at least four weeks’ paid annual leave. The WTD does not expressly specify how statutory holiday pay is to be calculated. However, it is well established that holiday pay should equate to ‘normal remuneration’. Normal remuneration has been interpreted to include not only basic salary but also remuneration which is intrinsically linked to the tasks the worker regularly performs.

The EAT held in Bear Scotland v. Fulton and others that compulsory non-guaranteed overtime (i.e., overtime that is compulsory for the employee if the employer requires it but which is not guaranteed to be provided) must be included in the calculation of holiday pay. The EAT also held, in Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council v. Willetts and others, that holiday pay should correspond to normal remuneration so that workers should not be discouraged from taking their annual leave entitlement; in other words, pay during holidays should not be below the rate a worker would expect to receive had they been working. For a payment to be treated as normal, it should have been made over a sufficient period of time on a regular or recurring basis.

The calculation of holiday pay has also been considered by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which held in Hein v. Albert Holzkamm GmbH & Co. KG that remuneration received for overtime does not, in principle, form part of normal remuneration. However, where the employment contract requires the worker to work overtime on a broadly regular and predictable basis then that overtime should be included in the calculation of holiday pay.
Continue Reading Court of Appeal: holiday pay must include regular voluntary overtime