Employment Law E-Bulletin - Oct 2006

Legislation

Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006

The Age Regulations finally came into force on 1 October 2006 making it illegal for employers to discriminate against employees, trainees or job seekers because of their age and ensuring that all workers, regardless of age, have the same rights in terms of access to training, benefits and promotion.

By way of a quick summary, the main points to note from the regulations are:

· There is now a national default retirement age of 65 which means that it will no longer be possible to force somebody to retire before 65 unless the earlier retirement age can be objectively justified.

· All employees have the right to request to work beyond the age of 65 and employers now have a duty to consider (although not to accept) such a request. In order to comply with this duty employers must meet with the employee and allow the employee a right of appeal from any decision.

· Employers must give employees at least 6 months’ notice of their intended retirement date.

· The upper age limit for unfair dismissal and redundancy has been removed meaning that employees under the age of 18 and over the age of 65 have the same rights to claim unfair dismissal and receive redundancy payments as other employees.

· Remuneration and non-payment benefits which are linked to length of service will be non-discriminatory provided that they only apply to 5 years or less service. Any benefits linked to service of more than 5 years must be objectively justified.

This is far reaching legislation which will have an enormous impact both on employers and employees. If you have not already done so, you should review your staff handbook and any employment policies to check that age is not used as a consideration in employment, promotion, training or benefits. Training should also be provided to all staff to ensure that they are aware of the implications of the regulations.

Work and Families Act 2006

Although this Act does not really come into force until 1 April 2007, it is important to bear it in mind now because it will apply to any woman who gives birth on or after the 1 April 2007 (i.e. anyone who is 3 months pregnant or less as of now). The key points to note are

· Women will now be entitled to 6 months’ ordinary maternity leave and 6 months additional maternity leave irrespective of their length of service.

· Employers can now have a reasonable amount of contact with women on maternity leave.

· Those women who decide to return early will now need to give 8 weeks’ notice as opposed to the previous 28 days.

· Women on maternity leave will be able to work for a maximum of 10 days to “keep in touch” with developments whilst on maternity leave without losing their entitlement to Statutory Maternity Pay.

· Maternity and adoption pay has been extended from 6 to 9 months.

· If the mother returns to work without using up her full maternity leave entitlement, the father or partner will now be able to take the remaining allowance as paternity leave up to a maximum of 26 weeks in order to care for the child.

Assistant Solicitor Katie Wood has also written a detailed article on the Work & Families Act.

October 2006 - Cases in Full

For further information on these or any other employment law matters, please contact Burnetts' employment law team on 01228 552222.