The annual rise in compensation limits which will come into effect from 1 February 2009 are as follows:

• the limit for compensatory awards for unfair dismissal will rise from £63,000 to £66,200
• the minimum basic award for unfair dismissal will rise from £4,400 to £4,700
• a 'week's pay' for the purposes of calculating statutory redundancy pay will rise from £330 to £350. The maximum statutory redundancy payment will therefore rise from £9,900 to £10,500.
• the daily rate for a statutory guarantee payment will rise from £20.40 to £21.50.

And in April 2009, the following will increase:

• the flat rate for maternity, paternity and adoption pay will be £123.06 (currently £117.18)
• the new rate for statutory sick pay will be £79.15 (currently £75.40).

The Government has confirmed that the right to request flexible working will be extended in April 2009 to parents of children up to the age of 16. Currently only those with children under the age of six (or disabled children under the age of 18) or who have adult dependants are able to make flexible working requests.

Employees must have at least 26 weeks' continuous service with their employer in order to qualify. Employers are able to refuse the requests but in practice most requests are met or an agreement which is acceptable to both parties reached.

There had been some question over whether this extension would be temporarily delayed, given the current financial downturn. It is estimated that the extension will apply to an extra 4.5 million employees.

In addition to the above, under the proposed Children, Skills and Learning Bill, all UK employees with at least 26 weeks' continuous service with their employer will be given the right to request time off to undertake relevant training to improve their skills and to have those requests properly considered by their employer. Employers will not have to agree to a request if there is a good business reason for refusal.

The Bill also states that by 2013, all young persons with the required qualifications will be eligible for apprenticeships.

This Bill will replace nine major pieces of discrimination legislation and bring them together in one single act. It will also:

• ban secrecy clauses which prevent employees discussing their pay with their colleagues
• place a new equality duty on public bodies - this will be extended to cover sexual orientation, gender reassignment, age and religion or belief
• require public bodies to report statistics on their diversity and progress on equal pay
• allow 'positive action' where candidates are equally qualified (however positive discrimination will remain illegal).

The Equality Bill is scheduled to be put before Parliament within the next year and further details are likely in the spring.

The Queen's Speech also confirmed plans to abolish income support and move the long-term unemployed (including single parents and people with disabilities) onto jobseeker’s allowance - with the result that they will face benefit cuts if they do not seek work. Incapacity benefit will be reformed so that many people currently receiving benefits will also be required to seek work.

The government has subsequently published a White Paper on welfare reform and it is expected that this will form the basis of the above Bill. The White Paper suggests that in return for benefit payments, those who have been on Jobseeker’s Allowance for two years will be required to participate in full-time activity to develop their work habits and employability skills. An 'escalating sanctions regime' will be tested which supplements financial penalties with mandatory full-time activity for those people repeatedly not meeting their obligations.

By October 2010, single parents with children aged seven and over will be required to look for work in order to get benefits. The Government is also considering what conditions may be attached to parents with children aged three to six.

The Pension Act 2008 received Royal Assent on 26 November. This requires employers to offer a qualifying workplace pension scheme to their workers and to automatically enrol all eligible workers into this scheme as from 2012. Employers may choose to offer the Government’s Personal Accounts scheme or another qualifying occupational or personal pension scheme.

A worker's minimum contributions to his/her pension (4% of pay) will be matched by minimum contributions from the employer (3%) and tax relief (1%).

Employers will not be allowed to ask job applicants whether they plan to opt out of automatic pension enrolment nor to offer financial inducements to their employees to opt out.

The European Union has announced that the Agency Workers Directive must be in force in the UK by 5 December 2011.

This will give temps in the UK equal rights to permanent staff after 12 weeks with an employer. After 12 weeks, temporary workers will be entitled to the same or higher pay and working time conditions as a permanent worker who might have been recruited to the same position. Currently, it is estimated that around half of temporary placements last for 12 weeks or more.

All other member states have to give equal rights to temps from their first day unless they reach a domestic agreement.

The directive can be downloaded from eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm

Following consultation, ACAS has now issued a revised draft guide on discipline and grievances, designed to supplement the new Code of Practice on discipline and grievance which comes into force on 6 April 2009.

The basic structure remains the same and the guide aims to provide 'good practice advice' for dealing with discipline and grievances.

It is 74 pages long, and offers comment and guidance on extracts from the Code of Practice, sample disciplinary and grievance procedures, sample letters and information on dealing with absence.

Employers can be penalised for failing to follow the Code, but employment tribunals are not required to follow the guide in determining whether a dismissal is fair or unfair. However, it seems highly likely that they will do so even if only to help them interpret sections of the Code of Practice. So it is possible that a tribunal could decide a dismissal is unfair based on an employer´s failure to do something suggested in the guide.

See:

• the draft ACAS guide: www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=981&p=0
• the draft code of practice: www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=961&p=0

We will be reviewing and amending our current disciplinary and grievance procedures, and our associated guidance, to ensure compliance with the above prior to April 2009 and will cover the changes in detail in a hot topic prior to this date.

The European Commission is aiming to promote a better work-life balance for workers and is proposing the following:

1. increasing the compulsory period of maternity leave from two to six weeks - this would have to be taken after childbirth and would effectively ban women from returning to work within six weeks of giving birth
2. giving full pay to women on maternity leave, although EU member states could cap these payments (but no lower than the rate of sick pay)
3. giving women on maternity leave the right to return to their jobs, or to equivalent posts, on terms and conditions that are no less favourable to them. They would also have a right to request changes to their working hours and patterns. Employers would be obliged to consider such requests, but not necessarily to grant them.
4. allowing women who have multiple births, or whose babies are hospitalised, premature or have a disability, to have more time off
5. letting women take the non-compulsory part of maternity leave whenever they want after becoming pregnant.

Some of these provisions are already incorporated into UK procedures and so will not be too onerous (eg women in the UK currently have the right to return to work and to request flexible working if they have a child under 6.) Also if "sick pay" is defined at the statutory rate, then our own flat rate maternity pay is already higher than this. But other bits are new - point 1 may result in higher costs as the compulsory period will have to be included when calculating bonuses etc, and points 5 and 6 are new.

The draft Directive must now be agreed by the European Parliament and Council of the EU and will be decided by qualified majority voting amongst EU members.

This is a private members bill which provides for:

• compulsory equal pay audits for employers found guilty of gender pay discrimination and a requirement to publish the outcome
• a 'reasonableness test' for the material factor defence to an equal pay claim - this would narrow the circumstances in which employers can defend differences in pay between men and women.
• an extension of the right to request flexible working to all parents of children aged 17 or younger.

The Bill will be given a date for its second reading and debate in the House of Lords. Whilst very few private members' bills succeed, given the government's stance on narrowing the gender pay gap and supporting working families, this is one which may just get through.

The Information Commissioner's Office has published a new guide for organisations that need to share people's personal information. The 'Framework Code of Practice for Sharing Personal Information' explains how public and private sector organisations can set up their own arrangements to ensure good practice where personal information is shared. The new guide breaks down compliance into easy steps, helps develop consistent standards and aims to give staff the confidence to make well-informed decisions about information sharing.

See: www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/detailed_specialist_guides/pinfo-framework.pdf

The Information Commissioner is to be given new powers to investigate potential contraventions of the Data Protection Act and to issue spot fines to offenders. The annual flat-rate registration charge is also to be replaced by a tiered fee structure based on the size of the organisation.

Data protection remains a sensitive issue and one which is of general concern, particularly given press coverage over the last year of a number of well-publicised losses. A survey conducted by accountants KPMG concluded that the problem of data loss from the public and private sectors is increasing in number and significance. The KPMG 'Data Loss Barometer' estimates over 400 breaches in 2008.

KPMG found that 280 million people have lost personal details over the last three years and identified the most vulnerable sectors as education and healthcare where the number of personal records, the culture of these establishments and restricted security budgets left them particularly open to loss. They report that the loss or theft of removable media, which include CDs, tapes and memory sticks, are commonplace and affect large numbers of people.

The European Parliament has agreed a new revised version of the European Works Council Directive. This is now expected to be implemented in Member States over the next two years.

Because this only applies to large organisations (at least 1000 employees within the European Economic Area with at least 150 employees in each of two or more member states) the changes are not covered here, but are on the website: see /docs/legal/consult.html

Acas has produced a new draft Code on Time Off Work for Trade Union Duties (plus an accompanying guide) and is currently consulting on this.

Comments are invited until 16 March 2009. The draft code can be downloaded from www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2122

Discrimination - sexual orientation

Many would see this as a vote for common sense. You may remember the case of English v Thomas Sanderson Ltd. Mr English was a heterosexual man who alleged that he was subjected to homophobic banter (including being called names such as 'faggot') simply because he had attended a boarding school and lived in Brighton.

Because it was clear that his tormentors knew that he was not gay, and because Mr English accepted that they did not believe him to be gay, his claim failed.

The Employment Appeals Tribunal had said that the Sexual Orientation Regulations 2003 did not protect him. However the Court of Appeal has now decided that they do!

Discrimination - sex and night shift bonuses

And what seems to us to be another common sense verdict!

We've also previously reported on the case of Blackburn and others v Chief Constable of West Midlands Police. West Midlands Police operates a 24/7 rotating shift pattern. All officers are generally required to work this although some are excused because of childcare responsibility or medical restrictions. An antisocial hours bonus was paid to those who could work 24/7 but not to those who were unable to do so.

The two female claimants in this case did not work night shifts because of their childcare responsibilities. They brought equal pay claims and argued that they should be paid the same night shift premiums as male colleagues who worked the night shifts.

The Court of Appeal said that the scheme indirectly discriminated against women as they are less likely to be able to work at night due to childcare responsibilities. However, they decided that the discrimination was objectively justified. The scheme aimed to reward those who worked the night shift - if those who didn't work it were paid the same bonus, the aim wouldn't be achieved.

So a bonus scheme which was limited to officers who worked night shifts was not unlawful sex discrimination.

It's been on the cards for ages, but our ability to opt-out from the maximum average hourly working week of 48 hours is now closer to being abolished, following the European Parliament's vote to scrap this. Earlier this year the UK had agreed a deal with the European Council to keep the opt-out in return for agreeing to the Agency Workers Directive - some therefore believe the EU Parliament has betrayed them. The vote will now go to conciliation for a maximum of eight weeks while both the European Council and the European Parliament try to agree on the future of the opt-out.

The European Parliament voted to adopt its own Committee's position on the Working Time Directive, set out in November 2008, as follows:

• the ability of an individual to opt out from the 48 hour week should end three years after the revised Directive is adopted
• the average 48-hour week should be calculated over 12 months (allowing more flexible organisation of working time)
• the entire period of on-call time, including any inactive part, should be working time, unless a collective agreement or domestic legislation determines otherwise
• for workers who work for more than one employer, working time should be the sum of the periods of time worked under each of the contracts
• the Directive should not apply to chief executive officers, other senior managers and persons directly appointed by a board of directors.

The amendments must go back to the Council for further debate and the likelihood is that the conciliation between the Parliament, Council and Commission will begin in the new year.

So - the opt–out has not gone yet! And the directive will not have to be implemented in the UK for three years from the date of its official publication, so whatever the outcome, this is unlikely to affect us until 2011. If it does go and the reference period is extended from 17 weeks to 12 months, this would give at least give greater flexibility for employees to work long hours during busy periods. A renewed interest in annual hours contracts may be on the cards! It may also be possible for member states to have their own legislation which states that inactive on-call time should not count towards the 48 hours - this would particularly help those in nursing homes, medical and educational establishments where employees are permitted to sleep whilst on call on the premises.

This month we've added the following: legal overviews of Attachment of Earnings Orders - see /docs/legal/AEO.html and restrictive covenants - see: /docs/legal/covenants.html

The gloomy predictions before Christmas were that more job losses are on the horizon. If you are needing to make cuts, do bear in mind that redundancies may not always be the answer! Sometimes a period of lay off or short-time working may see you through a temporary dip but allow you to retain your skilled and experienced workers. See our guide to layoffs: /docs/legal/layoff.html

Other types of agreement are also becoming more common, such as a percentage reduction in salaries across the board (sometimes for a temporary period); agreements to work either full or reduced hours for reduced or no salary for an agreed period with repayment when conditions improve; or the ability to take extended leave at a lower rate of pay for those who wish this. Also many employers are more inclined to consider flexible working requests for job-shares, part-time working, term time only if this will enable them to avoid redundancies and retain key workers. Again, our website offers much guidance on flexible working schemes and changing contracts. See: /docs/guides/flexible.html and /docs/legal/contractchange.html

However:

• Official statistics show that the number of people unemployed has risen to 1.82m - the highest level of unemployment for 11 years. This means that 5.8% of the workforce is unemployed. The CBI has warned that unemployment could peak at almost 3m by 2010.
• The CBI's latest Service Sector Survey reported that job losses in the service sector are expected to accelerate with firms reporting steep falls in business volumes and profitability, as well as plans to scale back employment and investment. Companies operating in consumer services saw profitability fall sharply for a third successive quarter.
• The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey found that large year-over-year declines in the construction, manufacturing and finance sectors are contributing to the weakest UK hiring forecast in 15 years.
• The CIPD's 'Labour Market Outlook' survey found that 26% of respondents have made contingency plans for additional redundancies.
• The EEF's economic forecast for 2009 warns that up to 90,000 jobs could be lost in the manufacturing industry.
• The REC and KPMG Report on Jobs shows sharper drops in permanent and temporary placements than have ever been seen in the survey's eleven-year history. Permanent placements declined for an eighth consecutive month with the rate of contraction accelerating to a new survey record. Similarly, temporary staff billings fell at the sharpest rate in the series history.
• London is likely to be hit hardest by the recession - the Local Government Association estimates 370,000 job losses in London by the end of 2010.

If you are facing redundancies, do ensure that you get it right! There is lots of advice and guidance on our website, together with template letters and forms and our helpline is well used to advising on selection criteria, procedures, consultation etc.

To start with, see: /docs/sbs/redundancy/index.html

We also run one day career transition workshops for clients to help employees work through the issues of redundancy or job loss. We cover all aspects of the changed job market, including flexible smarter working, where to look for new work/direction including recruitment agencies, search, adverts, networking, how to apply, preparing CVs, interviewing techniques etc. We also take a look at self-development, personal coaching and finding new directions in life. For further details please contact us.

A recent survey reported that nearly 40% of workers they surveyed thought that their employers are worse at saying ‘thank you’ than they were 10 years ago.

More than half said they receive a thank you once a month or more, 44% said their employers show their appreciation just once every few months and one in six said they ‘never’ receive a thank you. The report found that more than 40% of workers admitted that a perceived lack of appreciation was the main reason they left their previous job.

In our current economic climate, a sensible new year's resolution might be to show more appreciation especially where employees are demonstrating their loyalty and commitment in difficult times!