After Carillion – where now for corporate accountability?
Carillion’s 2016 annual accounts carried the now-ironic tagline: “Making tomorrow a better place”. By mid-2017, the company was issuing profit warnings. By January 2018 it collapsed completely, leaving debts of £7 billion in its wake. MPs squarely blamed the “recklessness, hubris and greed” of Carillion’s directors for the debacle. Carillion’s collapse wreaked financial havoc on […]
Read MoreEqual pay test claim in the retail sector could affect many businesses
The challenge Morrisons is facing over equal pay at the employment tribunal comes mostly from women who argue their pay is unfair because it is less than their male counterparts employed in distribution centres. Male workers there are paid £1 to £4 an hour more than their female colleagues who work in supermarkets, they claim. […]
Read MoreHarrassment & bullying – employers are letting themselves down
In a dramatic wake-up call for the legal profession to examine its culture and working practices, the preliminary findings of a recent International Bar Association (IBA) survey, revealed in October 2018, found that bullying and sexual harassment are rife. According to more than 5,000 lawyers in 120 jurisdictions, one-third of male lawyers and half of female […]
Read MoreProbate fee hike proposed yet again – more harm than good?
In April 2017, the government abandoned its controversial plan to hike probate fees. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) had been projected to raise an additional £300m a year to fund the courts and tribunals service (HMCTS). A new sliding scale schedule was planned with fees starting at £300, while for estates worth more than £2m […]
Read MoreVirgin Media the first to test Electronic Communications Code – ECC
Readers will be aware of the Government’s stated intention to introduce measures intended to make it more “straightforward” for operators to reach agreement with landowners and occupiers of land “in order to improve coverage capability and capacity” (ECC Code of Practice) – the result was the Digital Economy Act 2017 (“DEA”), and more specifically Schedule […]
Read MoreTo survive a merger you need to stay FLOAT
There is a hive of mergers happening in the world today. Currently, two prominent mergers are taking place in Europe. One is the Siemens-Alstom merger with combined revenues of €15.3 billion[1]. The other is the ThyssenKrupp-TATA steel merger with combined revenues of €15 billion and expected to produce annual synergies of up to €600 million[2]. […]
Read MoreShould there be a ‘right to disconnect’ for UK employees?
The summer of 2018 set many records. But as holidaymakers enjoyed the soaring temperatures, some of them were not just relaxing by their hotel pools, they were also reading through office memos and responding to emails from work colleagues. Thanks to the impact of technology ‘always being on call’ has become the new normal in […]
Read MoreFamily law reform long overdue in light of Owens v Owens divorce appeal
The case of Owens v Owens is unusual. Not because Mrs Tini Owens is a woman of 68 who wants to divorce her 80 year-old husband, Hugh: after all, in 2016, there were 114,000 divorce petitions in England & Wales. What marks out the Owens case is that Mr Owens contested the divorce – one […]
Read MoreSexual harassment policies in the workplace; draft with plenty of common sense
Since it first became widespread last October, #MeToo has been widely adopted by millions of Twitter users. Its endurance shows that the hashtag is much more than a temporary social media phenomenon. Instead, it has become symbolic of a worldwide movement against sexual harassment and assault which is designed to produce permanent change in how men […]
Read MoreSupreme Court decision against Pimlico Plumbers emphasises necessity of legislative reform
To much acclaim, the Supreme Court recently found against Pimlico Plumbers and in favour of Gary Smith, a self-employed plumber and heating engineer who had worked exclusively for the company for six years. But in doing so, it did not make new law. In what has been widely referred to as a landmark decision for […]
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