Employment Law 9e

Malcolm Sargeant, David Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429534935
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion des ressources humaines

Packed with a wealth of case law and legislation, this book will enable you to fully understand the intricacies of this fast-changing subject with ease. With features such as chapter summaries and further reading suggestions, Employment Law is well-suited to support you in your studies.

The ninth edition has been fully updated to include coverage of the latest legislative and case law developments, including:

• issues around shared parental leave;
• the national living wage;
• legal developments in the area of non-standard work.

Offering comprehensive coverage of all the key aspects of individual and collective employment law in a clear and accessible way, Employment Law is ideal for both LLB and HRM students.

Chapter 1

The study of employment law

Chapter Contents

1. 1.1Introduction
2. 1.2Primary and secondary legislation
3. 1.3The EU Treaties and legislation
4. 1.4The courts
5. 1.5Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service
6. 1.6Central Arbitration Committee
7. 1.7Certification Officer
8. 1.8Information Commissioner
9. 1.9Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)
10. 1.10Other useful websites
11. Further reading

1.1 Introduction

The subject of employment law is the regulation of the relationship between employer and worker or, put in another way, the relationship between the user of labour and the supplier of labour. This regulation takes place at an individual level and at a collective level. At an individual level, the law takes the view that the contract of employment is like any other contract, namely a legally binding agreement that two equal parties have voluntarily entered into. At a collective level, workers and employers have banded together into trade unions and employers’ associations in order, partly, to give themselves greater bargaining power with each other.

The sources of this regulation are diverse and include:

1. primary and secondary legislation initiated or supported by government;
2. the EU Treaties and legislation, usually, but not always, in the form of Directives;
3. the decisions of the courts, including the High Court, employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal, but especially, as in other fields of law, decisions of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court;
4. the decisions of international courts, currently the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR);
5. codes of practice and guidance issued by Ministers of the Crown and by individual bodies authorised by statute to do so. These latter include the Health and Safety Executive and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC);
6. the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) and the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), which have been given a special role by governments in the field of dispute resolution between workers and employers, both individually and collectively.

A concern for students of employment law is how to access the large amount of information available in the most efficient and effective way. Books are one source of information but further study means accessing the law and its sources directly. The purpose of this chapter is to provide some information on accessing employment law and to show that a large amount of information is available free from the organisations mentioned previously and others, much of which is accessible via the internet.

1.2 Primary and secondary legislation

The Acts of Parliament most often referred to in this book are the Employment Rights Act (ERA) 1996 and the Equality Act (EA) 2010. Both of these have been much amended by other statutes. There are other important Acts, such as the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act (TULRCA) 1992 and the National Minimum Wage Act (NMWA) 1998. There are also a large number of statutory instruments that form an important source of employment law. For example, much EU legislation has been introduced via regulations under s. 2(2) European Communities Act 1972.

Study sources for both Acts of Parliament and secondary legislation are:

1. All current legislation is available at: www.legislation.gov.uk. Here you can click on ‘Browse Legislation’, ‘New Legislation’ or ‘Changes to Legislation’ and you will be able to access all Acts of the UK Parliament adopted since 1988 together with draft legislation. If you click on ‘Statutory Instruments’, you will be able to access subordinate legislation. Bear in mind that there are several thousand statutory instruments adopted each year so it will help you if you know the year and the number that you are looking for. Thus SI 1998/1833 will lead you to statutory instrument number 1833 adopted in 1998, which will take you to the Working Time Regulations 1998.
2. Houses of Parliament – Hansard is the full verbatim report of debates in the Houses of Parliament and is kept by many libraries in microfiche format. There is also a large amount of information available on Parliament’s website at: www.parliament.uk.
   If you click on this, you will be able to choose between the House of Commons and the House of Lords and explore at your leisure. Click on ‘House of Commons’ and then ‘Publications & records’, and you will see a section on ‘Research publications’. If you click on these, you will be able to explore all the recent research papers written by House of Commons research staff. This will include papers on employment law issues and Bills before Parliament.
   Alternatively, the Parliament Home Page will give you access to the entire work of Parliament, including copies of Bills before Parliament and the current work of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It will usefully give you access to the Committee System and the reports that Select Committe...