Our partner Moore Blatch has the latest updates in employment law for 2017, including:
- New minimum wages from April
- The immigration skills charge of £1,000 per worker or £364 for small employers and charities (April 2017)
- The requirement for companies with more than 250 employees to publish gender pay gap information (expected 6 April 2017)
- Uber will appeal the judgement on the ‘gig economy’ that was made last October
Gender Pay Gap
Moore Blatch reports that the following information will be required of employers from this April:
- The difference between the mean pay of male and female employees.
- The difference between the median pay of male and female employees.
- The difference between the mean bonus pay paid to male and female employees between 5 April the previous year and 5 April in the current year.
- The difference between the median bonus pay paid to male and female employees between 5 April the previous year and 5 April in the current year.
- The proportions of male and female employees who were paid bonus pay.
- The proportions of male and female full-pay relevant employees in various ‘quartile bands.’
The employer will have to publish the information both on a specific government website and on their own website. There are no enforcement provisions, but the explanatory note to the Regulations indicates that failure to comply constitutes an ‘unlawful act’, and this allows the Equality and Human Rights Commission to take enforcement action.
Read more at the Moore Blatch website
The ‘Gig Economy’
Last year Uber was challenged over the employment status of its 30000+ drivers in the UK. As work patterns change there is a need for new rules on what constitutes employment, as opposed to self-employment, which offers none of the protections and security to workers that employed status does.
The Law Society is now joining calls for employment law reform as detailed in this report from Moore Blatch.