Background The Victorian Wage Theft Bill 2020 (the Bill) was passed by both houses of the Victorian Parliament on 16 June 2020. The Bill imposes significant penalties, including jail time, against employers who underpay their staff. The Bill has been in the making for a number of years, and was a key election promise for … Read more

The EAT has ruled for the first time that an employment tribunal in Great Britain can order disclosure of documents by a party who is outside Great Britain, even though the relevant tribunal rule only provides that the tribunal “may order any person in Great Britain to disclose documents or information”. The EAT rejected the … Read more

The Law Commission report ‘Employment Law Hearing Structures’ has made a number of recommendations extending the powers and jurisdiction of employment tribunals.  Although the Law Commission has no power to change the law, its recommendations are expected to be considered by the Government in due course. The recommendations include: widening employment tribunals’ jurisdiction to include … Read more

Our Asia Employment, Pensions and Incentives update this month looks at: the initial public holiday changes and subsequent extensions issued by various provinces in China, following the outbreak of Novel Coronavirus; an overview of changes to various employment legislation in South Korea, including changes to the Equal Employment Opportunity and Work-Family Balance Assistance Act, the … Read more

Our final Asia Employment, Pensions and Incentives update for 2019 looks at: the changes to immigration policies in China, that came into effect 1 August 2019 and relax the requirements for highly-skilled foreign workers and students which had previously been in place; in Malaysia, the amendments outlined in the Industrial Relations Bill which while not … Read more

A number of recent decisions have emphasised the importance of open justice and the limited scope for derogations from it.  The case of Curless v Shell International (see our blog post here) suggested that anonymity orders, at Court of Appeal stage at least, will be difficult to obtain in most cases. In L v Q … Read more

The Court of Appeal has held that an email containing advice from an in-house lawyer on redundancy was not, as the EAT had found, a cloak for dismissal on the basis of discrimination (Curless v Shell International Limited [2019] EWCA Civ 1710). The Court of Appeal agreed with the Employment Tribunal that the advice given … Read more

The EAT has held that an employer waived privilege in redacted parts of a draft dismissal letter setting out its lawyer’s comments, as a result of the employer’s decision to rely on other privileged material relating to the claimant’s dismissal (Kasongo v Humanscale UK Ltd). It is well established that, where a party to proceedings … Read more