Your Rights at Work

A Complete Guide to Employee Rights and Employer Responsibilities

Trades Union Congress TUC

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781398603905
• eBook ISBN: 9781398603929
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Law
• Index: Business

Are you afraid your employer might be infringing your workplace rights? Or are you an employer seeking information on your responsibilities? Written by employment experts at the Trade Unions Congress (TUC), this book sets out Your Rights at Work in simple and relatable terms. This book explains the rights of the UK worker and responsibilities of the UK employer, and explains them clearly. It offers jargon-free guidance that can be applied to any situation in work including: parental leave and maternity rights, flexible working, dismissal and redundancy, pay and holiday rights and grievance procedures.This edition has been updated to include the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, Britain's exit from the EU and regulatory changes to data protection laws, holiday pay and gender gap reporting. Protect your employees and be empowered as an employee by knowing Your Rights at Work.

Chapter One

Starting a job

The law starts to protect you as soon as you apply for a job. When you start work you gain more protection, and other rights kick in the longer you work for your employer.

Applying for and getting a job

You have some rights as soon as you apply for a job. When drawing up a shortlist or appointing the successful candidate, your employer must not discriminate against you because of sex, race, age, sexuality, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity, gender reassignment, religion or belief, or disability. Nor can an employer rule you out because you are a member of a trade union or have a record of activity as a trade union member. It must also comply with data protection requirements.

At some stage during the appointments process, your prospective employer is likely to ask for a reference. This is normally a statement from your previous employer or from your school or college saying that in their opinion you would be able to do the job. Your previous employer can legally refuse to give a reference, but if a reference is provided and it turns out to be inaccurate it could, in some circumstances, prevent you from getting a job or provide your employer with grounds to dismiss you. There have also been cases where employers have challenged reference providers and accused them of giving an over-favourable reference in order to get rid of someone. Nowadays it is more common for employers to provide a standard, factual reference confirming your dates of employment and job title.

Most application forms are clear that if you are found to have lied when filling in the form you will be liable to dismissal. In the past, few employers bothered to check the facts on an application form, but companies now exist that will check CVs and application forms for dishonesty, such as ‘exaggerating’ educational qualifications. This must be done with your agreement, but in reality there is not much of a choice, as you will be very unlikely to be considered for the job if you refuse. Honesty is, therefore, the best policy, but there are many ways of presenting your achievements in the best possible light, and many books will provide tips.

As well as asking whether they can check your references with an agency, an employer may ask you to take a drugs test. Again you can refuse, but an employer can make that refusal the grounds for not giving you the job. This would only be a problem if they were treating different applicants in different ways based on one of the unlawful forms of discrimination. If, for example, only black or ethnic minority applicants were being asked to take a drugs test, this would be unlawful racial discrimination.

Under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1996 your employer must ask you for your National Insurance number or some other evidence that you have a legal right to work in the UK. Employers must make this check for all new employees. If they limited it to one racial group or chose people they thought had foreign-sounding names then that would be unlawful racial discrimination.

Employers may also ask you about criminal convictions, but you do not have to reveal them if they are ‘spent’. This means the convictions happened long enough ago for the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 to allow you to keep them secret. For more information contact the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO), whose contact details are included in Chapter 9.

If you want to work with children or vulnerable adults you will need to have a basic disclosure certificate from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). This has replaced the check formerly done by the CRB. The check is requested initially by your intended employer, who will get a form from the DBS for you to fill out, but the certificate will be sent to you. Search for ‘DBS’ on the www.gov.uk website for more information.

When you accept a job offer

As soon as you have been offered a job and have accepted it, there is a basic legal contract between you and the employer, even if you have received nothing in writing. This works two ways. Firstly, it means that your employer has promised you a job. If the offer is then withdrawn it may be possible to sue your prospective employer, particularly if you have suffered loss because you have left your previous job. Breaking a contract is known as a breach of contract in legal jargon. If a court decides that your contract has been breached, it can order your employer to pay you ‘damages’, eg for lost wages. Secondly, it means that you have accepted the terms that are offered.

Contractual rights

The law requires your new employer to give you a written ‘statement of particulars’ of your employment. You should receive this within two months of starting the job. You might also be asked to sign a document called ‘a contract of employment’, but if not that’s fine so long as you receive a written statement of particulars confirming your hours of work, location and pay details. Instead of a contract of employment you might be given a copy of a staff handbook or another document with a similar title. It’s not unusual for some sections of a staff handbook to be included as part of your contract of employment. These sections will be legally binding. Information in other sections may just be provided for your information. For example, the holiday arrangements are likely to be part of your contract of employment but the location of coffee machines in your workplace will probably not.

Nothing set out in your contract can remove or reduce your statutory rights. Even if you sign a contract in which you agree to work for less than the minimum wage or if you sign away your rights to claim unfair dismissal, you are still protected. If a case went to court, any clause that denied or reduced your legal rights would be struck out as ‘void’.

In the Introduction we looked at the difference between implied terms (those assumed by the court to be in any contract of employment) and express terms (those written down). But there are other ways you can gain contractual rights. If you work for an employer who recognises a trade union and negotiates with the union about the terms and conditions ...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• 01 Starting a job
• 02 Payday
• 03 Working time rights
• 04 Families and work
• 05 Common problems at work
• 06 Discrimination
• 07 Getting the sack
• 08 Enforcing your rights
• 09 Further information
• Jargon-buster
• Acknowledgements
• Index