A trio of employment cases appear in this week’s NLJ employment brief, covering interpretation of the national minimum wage, prohibited conduct in chambers, and less favourably treated part-time workers
Ian Smith, of Norwich Law School, UEA, highlights the tax office’s ‘stringent approach’ to the rules in the first case, ‘which, it was accepted, hit an employer with no evil intent and resulted in the closure of a scheme meant to benefit the workers (none of whom, as far as one can see from the judgment, had objected to it)’.
The second case is an ‘important decision’ on s 111 of the Equality Act 2010 on instructing, causing or inducing discrimination. It concerns the extent to which a chambers may have been influenced by the campaign group, Stonewall, in their treatment of a barrister because of her beliefs on sex and gender.
Last but not least, Smith covers ‘the latest contribution to the difficult question as to whether any less favourable treatment must be “solely” because of the part-time status’. Here, jurisdictional complications arose from case law north and south of the Tweed.
