Employment Act 2002

Product Information

A range of improvements to employees’ existing parental leave rights ( UK9912144F) will take effect from April 2003. These include: Employers may refuse to grant requests for flexible working for objective business reasons. These may be because the working arrangement requested would add unreasonable costs to the business or it might have a detrimental impact on quality, performance or the ability to meet customer demand. Any refusal would need to be objectively justified and properly explained to the employees. To what extent the greater use of workplace procedures will reduce the volume of tribunal applications remains to be seen. The government’s estimate that the reduction will be between 30,000 and 40,000 applications per year has been met with some scepticism, particularly from Labour Party peers during the House of Lords’ debates on the new legislation. In any event, the new employee rights introduced by the Act will themselves add to tribunal workloads, with the right to seek flexible working arrangements perhaps the most likely provision to generate a significant number of claims. More fundamentally, concerns have been expressed that the 'three-stage' statutory minimum procedures are too 'minimalist' to offer effective protection to employees. In particular, they do not meet the accepted standards set out in the current ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures.

The Act makes it an implied term of every employment contract that the statutory procedures are to apply in circumstances to be specified by the secretary of state in regulations. Contractual procedures that are additional to, and not inconsistent with, the statutory procedures will be unaffected. Having completed its passage through Parliament, the Employment Bill ( UK0112104N) received royal assent on 8 July 2002. The Employment Act 2002 is a major piece of legislation. Its key themes are the enhancement of statutory rights designed to help parents balance work and family commitments, and the reform of employment tribunal procedures and workplace dispute resolution mechanisms in response to the rising number and cost of employment tribunal claims in recent years ( UK0108142N). It also includes provisions on a range of other issues, including equal treatment for fixed-term employees and time off for trade union learning representatives. The Act, and several sets of associated regulations, will be implemented in a number of phases over the coming year. The Act seeks to encourage more individual employment disputes to be settled within the workplace, without recourse to an employment tribunal. It introduces statutory minimum internal disciplinary and grievance procedures for all organisations that employ staff, and measures to promote their use. The Act sets out a statutory dismissal and disciplinary procedure and a statutory grievance procedure, each involving three stages. The standard dismissal and disciplinary procedure involves: The right will be available to all employees, who are parents or have responsibility for a child aged under 6, or disabled children aged under 18, and who have 26 weeks’ continuous service with the same employer. Draft Regulations state that the right will extend to those who are guardians or foster carers, or their spouse or partner. The request must be within 14 days of the 6th or 18th birthday.Paternity leave is when a male counterpart is able to have time off to spend with the child and the mother while receiving paid leave.

This new right to request flexible working is likely to be a matter which becomes more prominent and employers will need to start planning now as to how they will deal with such requests.The Act also provides the basis for amending employment tribunal rules to introduce a fixed period for conciliation by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), and to enable a tougher approach to the handling of weak cases. a meeting between the employer and the employee to discuss the matter, at which the employee has the right to be accompanied ( UK0010195F), and after which the employee must be informed of the employer’s decision; and award costs against a party’s representative for conducting the proceedings unreasonably (though ministers have made it clear that this will not apply in the case of representatives of 'not-for-profit' organisations, eg trade union officers); and

The Employment Act, which reached the UK statute book in July 2002, introduces new provisions concerning 'family-friendly' working, the resolution of individual disputes at the workplace, equal treatment for fixed-term employees and other matters. This feature summarises its main requirements and the timetable for their implementation, and looks at employer and trade union views of the new legislation. Maternity leave is one which is included with the leave a mother should get when she has given birth to a child. In the UK a pula would get 26 weeks of paid leave for time they will need to spend with their child. The Employment Act will also, from April 2003, give employees the right to request flexible working. Although there will be no automatic right to flexible working, the Act states that employers must give proper consideration to this type of request from employees.The Act introduces a number of changes to employment tribunal procedure. Among other things, it enables the secretary to state to make regulations authorising tribunals to: The dispute resolution sections of the Act are expected to be implemented in late 2003. Equal treatment of fixed-term employees the use of successive fixed-term contracts will be limited to four years, unless the use of further fixed-term contracts is justified on objective grounds. The change may be to the hours or time when the employee is required to work, the place of work or any other aspect of the employment terms that are to be set out in Regulations. The formal request must: be in writing; set out the working pattern; specify the date from which it is to become effective; and set out what effect it may have on the employer and how it could be dealt with. Employees are only allowed one request every 12 months.

changes to other aspects of the employee’s terms and conditions as specified in regulations by the secretary of state. Employers must then arrange a meeting within 4 weeks of the request to consider and discuss the request with the employee. Every employer must write to the employee within 2 weeks of that meeting with a decision, giving reasons if the application is objected. The employee can appeal within 2 weeks of the employer’s decision and the appeal must be heard within 2 weeks.Detailed provision on the operation of these rights will be set out in regulations. Consultation on draft regulations closed on 19 July 2002. The Act introduces a new statutory right to paid time off work for trade union 'learning representatives', where the union is recognised by the employer, to carry out a range of duties, including advising union members about learning or training matters. ACAS is currently consulting on revisions to its code of practice on time off for union duties to take account of the new rights. This aspect of the Act is not expected to take effect before 2003. A future EIRO feature will examine the significance of the new rights for union learning representatives in more detail. Equal pay questionnaires The Act sets out a procedure and timetable which employers must follow in responding to such an application, which will be fleshed out by regulations. The employer must arrange a meeting, within 28 days of receiving an application, to discuss the employee’s request, at which the employee may be accompanied by a representative. The employee must be informed of the employer’s decision within 14 days, and the employee has a further 14 days to appeal. Employment tribunals will be required to vary compensation awards by up to 50% where an employer or applicant has failed to use the statutory procedures. Moreover, the Act contains provisions preventing certain categories of complaint from being presented to tribunals until step 1 of the grievance procedure (sending written notice of a grievance to the employer) has been completed and at least 28 days have elapsed thereafter.