Banking on your workers: avoid falling foul of employment legislation

Bank workers are often what keep care services in operation, covering recruitment vacancies, staff holidays and sickness, and less popular shifts. They are your flexible, readily available resource, but are you ensuring that you comply with the frequently changing rules and entitlements for casual staff, and could the current market make this resource harder to obtain? Lucy Gordon investigates.

Implementing Work Scheduling Regulation: Compliance and Enforcement Challenges at the Local Level

Employment legislation intended to establish scheduling standards in hourly jobs is spreading across US cities. Yet the well-documented role that cost-focused business models play in shaping manager practices forecasts uneven compliance. Joining perspectives from labor and public policy studies, the authors examine variation in the organizational arena—local workplaces—where implementation of scheduling regulation is set to play out. Analyses draw on surveys and interviews with 52 retail and food service managers on the eve of enactment of Seattle’s Secure Scheduling Ordinance. By capturing the full range of variation in managers’ scheduling practices prior to enactment, and their distance from legal compliance, the authors contribute unique insight into the prospects of establishing universal work hour standards in service industries and the varying pathways employers will likely pursue toward regulatory compliance. Findings suggest targets for enforcement and manager training and offer insight into the implementation challenges posed by municipal-level regulation.

The emergence of coercive federal Australian labour law, 1901–2020

Over the past two decades, industrial relations scholarship has observed a trend towards an increasingly punitive industrial environment along with the ‘re-regulation’ of labour law. Absent from much of this literature, however, has been an empirical and historical measurement or comparison of the scale and quality of this systemic change. By surveying coercive and penal federal industrial legislation over the period 1901–2020, this study shows empirically that over the last 40 years, there has been a steep increase in the amount of coercive federal labour legislation in Australia. It further measures and compares the volume of coercive labour legislation enacted specifically against ‘labour’ and ‘capital’ or both throughout the same period (1901–2020). Analysis reveals a correlation between a high volume of coercive labour legislation with low levels of trade union power and organisation. Argued here is that coercive labour legislation has been crucial to transitioning from a liberal conciliation and arbitration model of Australian industrial relations towards a neoliberal framework of employment legislation. In the former, regulation was more collective, informal and egalitarian (embodied by the sociological concept of ‘associative democracy’). Under a neoliberal framework, regulation is now more individualised, technical, punitive and rarely enforced, resulting in less equal material outcomes.

Abuse of employment rights by pregnant women as a factor affecting the safety of economic activity

This article discusses such legal phenomenon as the abuse of employment rights in relation to maternity leave. The article analyzes the employment legislation, reveals the gaps in legal regulation of the issues of abuse of their right by pregnant employees. The author examines the most common practical instances of abuse of their right by pregnant employees: intentional withholding of information on pregnancy at the time of conclusion of an employment contract or termination of an employment contract for mercenary purposes, refusal of transferring to a position  that excludes the hazardous activities and refusal take on such position after being released from the main activity. The author underlines the inequality of positions of the employee and the employer with regards to protection from abuse of the employment contract by the opposite party. It is established that the options of the employer to protect their interests are limited, while a pregnant woman is in a more favorable legal position. The scientific novelty of this research consists in comprehensive analysis of the gaps and contradictions in legislation, as well as the decisions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in the sphere of regulation of inequitable conduct of pregnant employees. The author offers the mechanisms for countering the abuse of rights by pregnant employees, which are based on inclusion of the norms aimed at protection of the rights and interests of the employer into the local normative acts. The author also develops a range of proposals on the improvement of legislation for the purpose of restoring the balance between the rights and interests of the parties to the employment contract.

23. Statutory and Common Law Regulation of the Conditions of Employment

This chapter continues from the discussion of the obligations on employers to adhere to the Equality Act (EA) 2010 and protect their workers from discrimination and harassment, to a wider consideration of the regulation of conditions of employment. Legislation places many obligations on employers, and they are increasingly subject to statutory controls that provide for a minimum wage to be paid to workers, for regulation as to the maximum number of hours workers may be required to work, and for the protection of workers’ health and safety. In the event of an employer’s insolvency, the rights of employees are identified, and finally, the mechanisms for employers to protect their business interests in the contract of employment are considered.

A Solution to Fissuring? Revisiting the Concept of the Joint Employer

Among other matters, the Taylor Review addressed the issues of employee and worker status for statutory purposes and how the current law might be updated to reflect the realities of the modern workplace and developing models of the engagement of workers. It did not, however, propose reform in relation to the important and intimately connected question of the identity of the employer for the purposes of employment protection legislation. In particular, no consideration was given to or proposals made in its report in respect of the issue of whether a ‘functional’ employer approach to ascribing responsibility for compliance with employment law requirements—such as a ‘joint employment’ model—might be appropriate to deal with issues of perceived inadequate coverage of employment protection standards consequent upon certain employment legislation being limited in its application to the ‘contractual’ employer. While there are cogent objections to adopting a functional employer approach, the most recent domestic caselaw and the ongoing debate concerning the operation of the joint employer concept in the USA offer a valuable perspective on the scope and design of a functional employment model which can contribute to any debate which might ensue about the justification for, and feasibility of, such an approach.

Understanding the Employment Status of Gig-Workers in China’s Sharing Economy Era–An Empirical Legal Study

The prevalence of the Internet Plus model and mobile applications have brought people into the era of sharing economy, thus accelerating the generation of the “gig-worker.” Foreign experiences have tended to classify gig-workers as employees or as an additional employment category. However, reviewing China’s domestic practices, employment legislation is not enough to keep up with this innovative working style because the work classification and supporting mechanisms for gig-workers have not yet been explicated. This paper identifies the major types of gig-workers that have arisen and investigates 110 court cases to better understand the employment status of gig-workers in China. The empirical results indicate that the judgements of similar facts are diverse in the absence of a unified employment standard. Therefore, it is recommended that the work classification of gig-workers be clarified, lawful access to benefit plans and work protection system be safeguarded, and burden of accident liabilities be fairly distributed.