Employment Act 2002

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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. the introduction of a new right to two weeks’ paternity leave paid at the same standard rate as SMP. This is in addition to the existing right to 13 weeks’ parental leave; an increase in the period of maternity leave to six months’ paid maternity leave followed by up to six months’ unpaid leave; An Act to make provision for statutory rights to paternity and adoption leave and pay; to amend the law relating to statutory maternity leave and pay; to amend the Employment Tribunals Act 1996; to make provision for the use of statutory procedures in relation to employment disputes; to amend the law relating to particulars of employment; to make provision about compromise agreements; to make provision for questionnaires in relation to equal pay; to make provision in connection with trade union learning representatives; to amend section 110 of the Employment Rights Act 1996; to make provision about fixed-term work; to make provision about flexible working; to amend the law relating to matervkhnity allowance; to make provision for work-focused interviews for partners of benefit claimants; to make provision about the use of information for, or relating to, employment and training; and for connected purposes.

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. Employees wishing to take maternity leave will need to notify their employer by the 15th week before the expected week of childbirth. All notice periods, e.g. on changes to the start of maternity leave or with the expected return date, will be 28 days. 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 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. 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 introduces a number of changes to employment tribunal procedure. Among other things, it enables the secretary to state to make regulations authorising tribunals to:

Changes over time for: Chapter 1

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. Employees bringing equal pay claims will have the right to serve a questionnaire on their employers seeking information relevant to their claim or potential claim. This is in line with existing legislation covering sex, race and disability discrimination. Regulations on this issue are due to be laid before the end of 2002 for implementation in early 2003. Employer and trade union views Also, under this Act, there were many other factors such as equal pay, fixed-term work, flexible working. The paternity leave provisions will allow fathers to take up to 2 weeks’ paid paternity leave. It must be taken within a period of 56 days beginning with the date of the birth or the child being placed for adoption. Paternity and adoption leave will only be available to employees, who have continuous service with the same employer for at least 26 weeks by the 15th week before the child is expected to be born, or, by the week in which an agreed match for adoption is made. The wording of the draft Regulations is such that the parental and adoption leave provisions will extend to co-habiting and same sex partners.

In addition to the legislative measures contained in the Act, the government set up an Employment Tribunal System Taskforce to look at ways of making the tribunal system more efficient and cost effective ( UK0111105N). This issued its report in July 2002. Its main recommendations include the establishment of a high-level coordinating body to ensure greater coherence within the employment tribunal system and the promotion of best practice, and a greater emphasis on the prevention of disputes. Ministers have said that they will respond to the Taskforce’s recommendations in the autumn. Workplace dispute resolution The adoption leave provisions will mean that employees will have a right to take 26 weeks "ordinary" adoption leave, followed by 26 weeks unpaid additional adoption leave. The employee seeking adoption leave must produce a Matching Certificate from an approved adoption agency. The adoption can be of a child from overseas, but the child placed for adoption must be under 18. The leave can begin no earlier than 14 days before the expected date of placement and no later than the date on which a child is placed for adoption. A modified, two-stage dismissal and disciplinary procedure will apply in cases of gross misconduct. Similarly, a modified, two-stage written procedure will apply to grievances on the part of former employees. 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 Employment Act, which has only recently been enacted, provides new rights for fathers to take paternity leave and, for couples adopting a child, the right for one of the couple to take adoption leave. The Act also provides for new rules on maternity leave and pay.

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Text of the Employment Act 2002 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk. 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.

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 Act sets out a similar three-stage grievance procedure, starting with a written statement of the employee’s grievance. Where an employer fails to follow the statutory dismissal and disciplinary procedures a dismissal will be automatically unfair. The Act also specifies that an employer’s failure to follow a procedure other than the statutory procedure will not by itself make a dismissal unfair, provided the employer can show that following the appropriate procedure would have made no difference to the decision to dismiss. A range of improvements to employees’ existing parental leave rights ( UK9912144F) will take effect from April 2003. These include: 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.

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The Act also gives parents of children under six years of age (or disabled children up to the age of 18) the right to request flexible working patterns for childcare purposes, and places a duty on employers to give proper consideration to the request ( UK0112105N). The aim is to facilitate dialogue between working parents and their employers about working patterns that meet parents’ childcare responsibilities as well as employers’ business needs. Such a request may involve: The Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 came into force on 1 October 2002. They provide that: 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 The Employment Act 2002 contained new rules on maternity, paternity and adoption leave and pay, and changes to the tribunal system in the United Kingdom.