The Government has announced plans to increase the period before an employee can make an unfair dismissal claim against their employer – the “qualifying period” from the current one year, to two years. This change will come in from April 2012.

The Government has also announced the introduction of fees for those bringing a claim against an employer at an Employment Tribunal. Litigants will only receive their fee back if they win their case.

These new measures were announced by George Osborne at the Conservative Party Conference as part of a package of measures to make employing people easier and reduce litigation, associated costs and red-tape. The aim of which is to encourage much-needed economic growth.

See this link for the current position relating to qualifying for unfair dismissal.

Business Secretary Vince Cable has stated that shareholders should have a bigger say on executive pay to ensure there are “no rewards for failure”.

Mr Cable has said there is a “real problem” with pay rising while share prices stay flat or actually declined.

He said he did not want “state control of pay”, but was “well-disposed” to shareholders having a veto. “People accept capitalism but they want responsible capitalism”.

He has also set out proposals aimed at reining in multi-million-pound packages, including requiring companies to set out the criteria used to determine pay and perks. These include putting employee representatives on remuneration committees.

Mr Cable has gone on to say his big regret this year was not securing tighter controls on bank pay and bonuses, allowing the message to go out that unrestrained greed is acceptable.

400% Increase
“Executive pay has increased by over 400% over the last decade at a time when share prices haven’t increased at all and basic pay of most employees hasn’t increased at all. “There is a real problem here and what we’re looking at in this proposed discussion paper is different ways in which shareholders can have a more effective voice.” “What I want to see is rewards for success not rewards for failure. “We don’t want to go down the direction of state control of pay, that’s completely wrong. What we do want to see is shareholders being more active in exercising discipline over the companies they own.”

Mr Cable is in favour of shareholders being able to block pay awards they felt were unreasonable, but discussions were needed with the business community before any such move was implemented.

Mr Cable’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will publish a discussion paper on the proposals in October.

Pay Reporting
Changes to the reporting requirements for all stock exchange-quoted companies are due to come into force in October 2012, following a three-month consultation. At present, the details of each executive board member’s salary, pension, bonuses, and shareholdings are recorded but in separate parts of the annual report.

Under the new system they will be brought together in one table – with a total figure given to shareholders for the first time.

An explanation of how the package was arrived at will also have to be included, as well as projections of the minimum and maximum each executive could expect the next year.

Pay Rises Since 1998
The median total remuneration for FTSE 100 chief executives had risen from £1m a year in 1998 to £4.2m a year in 2010.

Pension Holders
Anyone with a pension also has a vested interest, not just in the actual pay rewards, but in the performance of chief executives. Executives should receive outstanding pay for outstanding performance. However, simply being the chief executive does not entitle a person to outstanding rewards.

UBS
UBS is a much more extreme example, chief executive Oswald Gruebel has stated that he will not resign, despite £1.5 billion in losses caused by fraudulent trader Kweku Adoboli. If Mr Gruebel does not see his ultimate responsibility for this, is he entitled to his generous pay?

Even though UBS is a Swiss bank, British pension funds and pension holders have investments in it.

Class Action
If boards do not act they risk class actions brought by aggrieved shareholders. Legal action will harm company share prices and compound any losses suffered. This applies to UBS today, but could easily apply to other companies in the future. Better to act, than react.

Hello,

This is just a brief note to let everyone know that we have updated all of our free legal wills

We are the only legal website to offer comprehensive free legal wills to visitors and users. There is no need to register, (so we do not collect and sell your data – ever), this is all in line with our privacy policy. We also do not ask or suggest that you leave a charitable legacy to any particular charity.

All we do is provide a comprehensive free service. All of our Wills come with further information and a completed sample. This makes them easy to follow and complete.

Furthermore, our Wills for married people have now been extended to cover same-sex couples in civil partnerships.

Please see direct links to the new Wills below:

Free Wills for Women
Married Woman with Children
Married Woman without Children
Single Woman with Children
Single Woman

Free Wills for Men
Married Man with Children
Married Man without Children
Single Man with Children
Single Man

Please feel free to tell all your friends.

Just a quick note to others who may seek to copy our Wills (and in some cases sell them on) all of our Wills remain our copyright – so think again.

We are pleased to announce that the latest version of the Employers Pack (version 23) is now fully compatible with the latest Apple Mac operating system – OSX Lion – 10.7.

This includes all updates to the new operating system, so from 10.7.0 – onwards.

Please take the time to look at the Employers Pack to see all the documents included in it, and why it provides everything an employer needs to manage their employees.

The Employers Pack is your complete Staff Handbook.

It has been reported that Louise Mensch, MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire has received death threats against her and her children.

Louise Mensch is also a member of the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport.

That such a high-profile MP has detractors should not really be a surprise. However, what is a surprise is that people are prepared to make direct threats against her and her family.

According to the BBC a 59 year old man has been arrested in Gloucestershire on suspicion of making threats via email and various social networking sites.

What amazes us is that some people feel both the need and the right to make such threats – their stupidity and naivety is astounding. It is as if they believe they can do whatever they like on the internet or via email and that it has no consequences.

An email or posting lasts forever – unlike a physical letter, which can be lost or the handwriting or print fades with time. If it is electronic it can be both stored permanently and recalled instantly. And yet there are some who believe that it is by it’s nature temporary, fleeting, easily dismissed.

When we started back in 1996 the internet was fairly lawless, but it was started with the highest possible human goals in mind – to communicate and make information available to many.

We still hold true to those goals, dismiss them as hippy nonsense if you will, but they were present on the internet long before the mob turned up. These ideals also spawned some of the best services on the internet, services we all use on a daily basis.

However, the mob has turned up, along with the cyber-bullies.

These people believe that their email address cannot be traced, that a disposable email gives them anonymity, that their ISP who uses dynamically assigned IP addresses cannot tell who they are. They make threats from the shadows, they send repeated and abusive emails and seek to harass.

Internet access is not a right – not when it is abused. Such people forgo the right to access the internet and all the wealth of information it holds and the communication it allows.

So, it does not matter if you are a prominent MP or you work in customer service, you should not have to put up with the actions of the stupid and cowardly.

Given the recent sentences handed down to Facebook riot inciters it will be interesting to see if a conviction results in this case, and if it does the sentence handed down. It is up to the judge to decide the sentence (not our or any other public opinion). However, given that these were direct threats against a mother and her family a custodial sentence should really follow.

A lot has been said recently about “sending messages”.

Now a clear message must be sent that cyber-bully or threats are real and will not be tolerated in a civil society.

For those that persist – your IP address will come to haunt you.

As we all know two men (Jordan Blackshaw, 20 and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22) have been sentenced to 4 years each for separately attempting to incite riots via Facebook.

Both attempts failed miserably, which itself must be fairly humiliating for them.

As for the sentences they received they are clearly disproportionate, but are intended to send a message.

However, who is sending the message? An independent judiciary or a Prime Minister caught on the hop and now getting ahead in the indignation stakes?

The independence of the judiciary is an absolute cornerstone of our Western democracy. It is not for mere (here today, gone tomorrow) politicians to dictate sentencing policy.

Before anyone accuses us of going soft on rioters, we are not. No one rioted as a result of these posts on Facebook and no damaged was caused. Their peers read the messages and sensibly decided the calls were stupid, as stupid as the people who sent them. The inaction of their peers speaks volumes about the sensible majority of young people.

So four years for posting on Facebook has inevitably led to an appeal by one of the men. This will take up more court time and public money. Plus the appeal has a good chance of succeeding. If it does it will undermine the very deterrent that effect that was being sort.

For violent offences locking people up is for the public good. However, imprisoning many of the looters will give the public a limited and temporary sense of justice. Certainly imprisonment will be a very rude shock for many. But once they are forgotten and are still serving their sentences what is the benefit to us?

A short term of imprisonment (from a few days to a few months) would be a good idea. That should then be followed by 6-12 months spent at the working end of a broom in the very communities (frequently their own) that they trashed.

Those convicted should be made to go back (where possible) to the shops and businesses they looted and destroyed and clean them up. Once this has been done they could turn their attention to cleaning the parks and public areas of the same communities.

It is understandable that people want to see justice done, but when someone is sent to prison you only see justice done on that day.

What better sight for the good people of Clapham (or any other area) as they walk down the hill to Clapham Junction station than to see an army of people in high-visibility jackets cleaning the streets, parks and other public places. Not just for a day, but for 5 days a week and for months.

It would be a proper pay-back and it might also give these people a sense of pride in their own communities and even a purpose in life.

“Broom-camp” would not be a soft option and those rightly seeking justice would see it in action day after day on the very same streets.

Employers must provide every employee with a “statement of terms” within 2 months of the employee’s start date – this is the legal bare minimum requirement.

But importantly it does not offer the employer the sort of protection they will need (or would be very wise to have).

Free employment contracts are available on the internet, but they do not cover the important areas required by an employer.

Naturally, we would say that free employment contracts are not a good idea because we sell contracts. But, it really is a case of “you get what you pay for”.

When was the last time you used a free plumber? Never and if they did exist would they been any good at stopping leaks?

An employment contract is much better for both employers and employees. A comprehensive contract of employment allows an employer to specify an employee’s duties and responsibilities – so an employee knows exactly what is expected of them. See below for a bare list of what should be included in an employment contract template.

• Names of the Parties
• Employment Contract Start Date
• Employee’s Job Title and Description
• Place of Work
• Hours of Work
• Probationary Period
• Salary
• Assessments
• Deductions
• Expenses
• Holidays
• Sickness & Disability
• Pension
• Notice
• Restrictive Covenants
• Grievance and Disciplinary Procedure
• Retirement
• Severability
• Prior Agreements
• Jurisdiction
• Particulars of Employment

For more detail see:
Employment Contracts – What should be included in an employment contract?

A recent survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers has found that 1 in 3 workers in the UK admits to taking a so-called “sickie”.

A “sickie” –  a made-up reason for being off work, usually pretending to be ill. Four out of ten workers even went as far as to spend a few days at work prior to a sickie building up their fake symptoms.

Reasons for being sick
The various reasons/justifications for calling in sick include:

• already work hard and so deserved time off.
• boredom at work
• depression
• family issues

The more creative excuses for taking time off included, breast enhancement surgery, injury during sex, dart in the back of the head, dementia found in gums after trip to dentist, taking dog to the vet (death of the same dog was previously used as an excuse) and limescale falling into eyes whilst having a shower.

On a more serious note these absences are said to cost UK businesses £32 billion a year. Though we are unsure of the maths used to calculate this loss. The figure also does not take account of all the unpaid extra hours and overtime done by many UK workers, all of which probably negate this figure.

However, unauthorised absences can cause severe disruption to smaller businesses. They also damage staff morale, because the staff that do turn up frequently have to do the absence employee’s work.

Key things to watch out for are absences on a Friday or Monday, particularly Mondays, as this can also point to a “hectic” social life.

Flexible working
However, updating working practices can help to solve the problem, as many people take sickies because they are unhappy at work. Some jobs, particularly office jobs lend themselves to flexible working patterns, such as flexible hours and woking from home for part of the week. These practises can lead to increased productivity and better employee retention.

Staff Handbook
We would recommend our Staff Handbook for both reducing unauthorised absences and for introducing flexible working.

The latest allegations relating to News International and phone hacking are a new low and could cause very serious consequences for News International.

The Guardian is alleging that senior journalists at the News of the World paid police officers to “ping” mobile phones to determine their location.

Pinging is simply sending a signal to a mobile phone, which the mobile phone automatically responds to. The response time can be measured from two or three mobile phone masts to triangulate the signal and so give the location of the phone. This is usually accurate to within a few hundred metres.

Pinging is usually used by the police to track serious criminals and terror suspects on the move. Hence why pay-as-you-go phones purchased with cash are a favourite with criminals. These are then regularly discarded to reduce the risk of tracking.

However, the mobile phones pinged for the New of the World belonged to celebrities and other people deemed newsworthy by the News of the World.

Journalists passed the phone numbers to the police officer or officers and paid for the location search results.

This is a breach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA).

The Act was introduced to keep pace with modern technology, such the internet, mobile phones, and encryption. The Act allows for the tracking and interception of communications to carry out investigation and surveillance.

The Act allows government officials to invoke powers under the Act on grounds of national security, for the purposes of detecting crime, preventing disorder, public safety, protecting public health, or the interests of the economic well-being of the UK.

(You may have noticed that the list above does not include tracking premiership footballers to see if they go home promptly after a game, or whose home they go home to.)

Joking aside – for a public company to bribe police officers to breach RIPA and use it for tracking private individuals is very serious.

There is no defence that the public company is a media company or newspaper securing a story. Ex News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman has was sentenced to four months in jail in 2007. Glenn Mulcaire received six months for the same offence.

It could well be that further convictions for breaching the Act will result in longer sentences for those found guilty.

The remaining issue is how far up the chain of command does this go?

Not in the police – in News International.

We have now released Employers Pack version 23.

The new version updates the Pack to comply with the Bribery Act 2010, which came into force on 1st July 2011.

The Employers Pack includes updated employment contracts, grievance & disciplinary policy and consultant’s agreements. In the Pack accepting or offering bribes or inducements now constitutes gross misconduct and so allows an employer to dismiss an employee or consultant without notice.

The Pack also includes background information on the Bribery Act and further ways in which to comply.

The Employers Pack is a complete Employer’s Handbook that allows employers a cost-effective way to manage their employees.

Please see the full staff handbook contents here.