Employment Act 2002
Bill introduced: 8 November 2001
Completed Commons Committees: 24 January 2002.
Published: 30 January 2002 (Previous version (Bill 44) is replaced by (Bill 86)).
This Act covers a wide range of issues that govern your relationship with your employer. It gives you certain rights to make family life easier whilst also affording your employer protection too.
It covers:
- work and parents,
- resolving workplace disputes,
- improving tribunal procedures,
- bringing in an equal pay questionnaire,
- implementing the Fixed Term Work Directive,
- the right to time off work for union learning representatives,
- work focused interviews for partners of people on working-age benefits,
- data sharing.
Policy Commitment.
The previous government claimed this bill was proof of its commitment to highly productive, modern and successful workplaces. The Act is aimed at promoting fairness and partnership at work. The Labour administration claimed it would deliver support for working parents and cut back on red tape for employers. The method deployed to achieve this was:
- simplify the rules governing maternity;
- simplify paternity and adoption leave and pay;
- make dispute settlement easier.
It impacts on people’s lives by:
- helping working mothers;
- providing an entitlement to 6 months paid maternity leave, plus a further 6 months unpaid;
- an increase of more than 60% in the rate of Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance (it has gone from £62 up to £100);
- Helping hundreds of thousands of mothers benefit from increased maternity pay;
- increasing the maternity pay period up to 26 weeks;
- recognising the important role that fathers and adoptive parents play in raising a family;
- giving working fathers 2 weeks paid paternity leave;
- giving working adoptive parents 6 months paid and a further 6 months unpaid leave;
- making rules simpler on maternity, paternity and adoption leave and pay;
- harmonizing the rates of paternity and adoption pay with maternity pay;
- helping companies deploy flexible working arrangements and hours;
- putting the onus on employers to seriously consider requests from parents of young children to work more flexibly.
The Act is not only in your favour, but helps your employer too:
- You can be refused leave if there is a clear business reason;
- new parents will be encouraged to stay in work rather than leave to care full-time for their new families, thus keeping valuable skills and training within the business environment;
- Women must give more notice to return from maternity leave;
- Improving the speed of recovery of Statutory Maternity, Paternity and Adoption Pay from Inland Revenue;
- Making it easier to reimburse employers for maternity, paternity and adoption payments;
- 100% recoverable maternity, paternity and adoption payments for small employers;
- further compensation payments for maternity, paternity and adoption.
Dispute Resolution
The Act has a number of paragraphs designed for building constructive employment relations between you and your employer. It also aims to avoid the use of litigation by improving conciliation and other modes of communication. It ensures that tribunals are user-focused and modern in order that they deliver swift and efficient justice.
- The Act encourages companies to resolve disputes internally by bringing in minimum internal disciplinary and grievance procedures;
- The Act encourages you to raise grievances with your employer before making a complaint to a tribunal;
- The Act provides some time limit extensions for lodging complaints with tribunals.
- The Act allows improved understanding of the relationship between you and your employer. This is achieved though wider compliance with the statement of employment particulars.
- The Act removes the threshold level of 20-employees for information on disciplinary and grievance procedures;
- The Act changes how unfair dismissals are judged. Shortcomings in dealing with procedures can be ignored by the tribunal, so long as minimum standards are met and it was otherwise fair. This means that your employer can no longer face losing a case because of an irrelevant mistake. However, your employer must have been fair and have acted reasonably in dismissing you;
- The Act allows amicable settlements by means of fixed conciliation. It also widens the scope of compromise agreements, ensuring it does not have to be limited just to agreements about the particular complaint, but they can now be used as a final settlement for related claims;
- The Act provides swifter delivery of tribunal services;
- The Act implements the EU Directive on fixed term work and will prevent pay and pension discrimination against fixed term workers;
- The Act includes rights for fixed term employees to be paid the same amount as permanent staff doing similar jobs and working for the same employer.
Work focused interviews
Partners of people on working-age benefits get work-focused interviews as part of The Act. This affects almost half a million people. The key aim is to encourage them to see work as a realistic option, rather than not being anymore profitable than claiming benefits. It also aims to build upon skills and help them tackle obstacles to work. The Act is designed to inform people about the support available to help them find work. However, there is no obligation to take up help or work. The Act offers partners personalised support and advice through a named adviser.
Trade Union learning representatives.
Trade union learning representatives (ULRs) can now take paid time off in connection with their duties in order that they are well trained to carry them out. These rights are similar to those enjoyed by shop stewards and other lay union representatives. This is deemed to be good for both employer and employee because ULRs provide cost efficient expert advice.
Workforce Development.
The Act aims to improve the quality and amount of workforce development. This aspect focuses in on sections of the workforce who generally miss out on training ( older men, ethnic minorities, part timers).
Questionnaire on equal pay
The Act brings in a questionnaire in equal pay cases going to a tribunal. It will make it easier for individuals to ask for key details from their boss if they are deciding about bringing a case. The aim is to, not only simplify and speed up tribunals, but to cut down the number actually ending up as cases (by up to ten percent).
Data sharing
Data sharing allows the Department of Work and Pensions to use information that it receives across all of its functions. For example: sharing National Insurance contribution records allows better evaluation of employment and training programmes, thereby helping the government deliver more effective services.
Minimum Wage
This part of the Act provides a statutory minimum wage for every worker in the UK. The legistlation puts in place a threefold system of enforcement, through tribunals, an administative body and self regulation. There is now just one notice that the Inland Revenue will give to employers who underpay. There can be a civil penalty of up to £5000 for non-compliance. See our separate section on the National Minimum Wage
