Employment Law Changes Which Take Effect On 1 October 2006.A number of significant changes in employment legislation are effective from 1st October 2006. Age Discrimination The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 make it unlawful to discriminate against someone on the basis of age unless, where discrimination is either direct or indirect, such discrimination can be objectively justified. Although the pensions' provisions of these Regulations have now been deferred until 1 December 2006, the rest of the Regulations come into force on 1st October 2006 as planned. Please Click Here for a link to our Age discrimination Law Now series. Family Friendly Rights The Work and Families Act 2006 makes important changes to many family friendly rights. A number of provisions of this Act and related regulations come into force on 1 October 2006 and will apply to women whose expected week of childbirth or date of adoption falls on or after 1 April 2007. The legislation will: extend the period of statutory maternity pay (SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing) A multiprocessing architecture in which multiple CPUs, residing in one cabinet, share the same memory. SMP systems provide scalability. As business increases, additional CPUs can be added to absorb the increased transaction volume. ), maternity allowance (MA) and statutory adoption pay (SAP) from 26 weeks to 39 weeks; remove the length of service requirement for additional maternity leave maternity leave n → baja por maternidad maternity leave maternity n → congé m de maternité maternity leave maternity n (AML AML - A Manufacturing Language ) so that all mothers will now be entitled to one year off for maternity leave; increase the period of notice that an employee has to give to her employer when returning early from AML or additional adoption leave (AAL (ATM Adaption Layer) The part of the ATM protocol that breaks up application packets into 48-byte payloads which become ATM cells when the 5-byte headers are attached. The AAL resides between the higher layer transport protocols and the ATM layer. ) from 28 days to eight weeks; allow women or adopters to go into work for up to 10 mutually agreed 'keeping in touch' days during their maternity leave, without losing SMP or SAP entitlement for those weeks. The legislation also provides protection from detriment or dismissal for employees who undertake, consider undertaking or refuse to undertake such work; clarify employers' rights to have "reasonable contact" (which will be defined in forthcoming guidance) with employees who are on leave; allow women to choose to start their Maternity Pay Period on any day so that maternity leave can be aligned with pay; allow employers to split weekly payments of SMP, SPP (1) (Scalable Parallel Processor) A multiprocessing computer that can be upgraded by adding more CPUs. (2) (Standard Parallel Port) The Centronics parallel port that was used on the first PCs. and SAP over two pay periods if this makes administration easier; remove the small employers' exemption so that employers with five or less employees are no longer exempted from a finding of automatic unfair dismissal unfair dismissal n → despido improcedente unfair dismissal n → licenciement abusif unfair dismissal unfair n → where they do not allow an employee returning from AML or AAL to return to the same or a similar job. National Minimum Wage The national minimum wage will increase to [pounds]5.35 for workers aged 22 and over and to [pounds]4.45 for workers aged 18-21. Notification of Collective Redundancies In Junk v K'hnel (case c-188/03), the ECJ ECJ European Court of Justice held that employers could not issue notices of dismissal until they had consulted employee representatives and notified the competent public authority. The Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (section 193) has now been amended to provide that an employer proposing collective redundancies must notify the Secretary of State of its proposal before it gives notice to any employee to terminate his employment contract. Licensing of Gangmasters The Gangmasters Licensing Authority The Gangmasters Licensing Authority is a UK agency regulating the supply of workers to the agricultural, horticultural and shellfish industries. Employment agencies working in those fields need to be registered with the authority from 1 October, 2006. (GLA) was set up to curb the exploitation of workers in the agriculture, horticulture, shellfish gathering and associated processing and packaging industries. From 1 October 2006 it will be illegal for a business to provide labour to these regulated sectors if they do not have a gangmasters licence. This article was written for Law-Now, CMS (1) See content management system and color management system. (2) (Conversational Monitor System) Software that provides interactive communications for IBM's VM operating system. Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq Law-Now information is for general purposes and guidance only. The information and opinions expressed in all Law-Now articles are not necessarily comprehensive and do not purport to give professional or legal advice. All Law-Now information relates to circumstances prevailing at the date of its original publication and may not have been updated to reflect subsequent developments. The original publication date for this article was 22/09/2006. Mr Simon Jeffreys CMS Cameron McKenna CMS Cameron McKenna LLP (sometimes referred to as Camerons or, internally, CMCK) is an international law firm with over 130 partners and offices throughout the United Kingdom and Central and Eastern Europe, with branch offices in Bristol (established in LLP LLP - Lower Layer Protocol Mitre House 160 Aldersgate Street London EC1A 4DD UNITED KINGDOM Tel: 207367 2106 Fax: 207367 2446 E-mail: www.law-now.com URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. : www.law-now.com Click Here for related articles (c) Mondaq Ltd, 2006 - Tel. +44 (0)20 8544 8300 - http://www.mondaq.com |
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