Employment Contract Rights

The aim of this write up is to explain Employment Law and using the issues in case study provided to advise the client Julia. The advice will show what course of action if any the client can take if any of the issues illustrate a breach of contract by the employer.

Employment law is based on Common law, Legislation, European Law, Codes of practice and regulation recent governments have shown an increase in legislation in the area of employment law with the most significant is the Employment Rights Act 1996 which has seen significant amendments, such as the Employment Relations Act 1999, Employment Act 2002, the Works and families Bill 2006 and most recently the Age Discriminations act 2006.

Employment law is law for the work place, for both the provider of the opportunity of work and the individual who accepts the offer of the opportunity of work hence referred to as the employee and the employer respectively. Employment law provides parameters and boundaries for both the employer and the employee. Employment law has legislated in the areas of recruitment and selection i.e. before employment, during employment and redundancy i.e., after employment.

During the recruitment and selection process Employment Law protects the possible employee from discrimination via the Anti-Discrimination Law. The main statues are: Sex discriminations Act 1975, Sex discriminations Act 1986, Race Relations Act 1976, Disability Discriminations Act 1995, Disability Act 2005 and the Equality Act 2006, these ensure that individuals are protected from the employee from discrimination on the biases of gender, race, disability etc. the Anti-Discriminations Act is not limited to recruitment and selection but also during appointment and even through to redundancy selection etc.

There are three forms of discrimination: direct discrimination which is when a person is discriminated directly on the grounds of race, disability etc, indirect discrimination where an employer may use wording in vacancy advertisement that may well illustrate discrimination and victimisation. Where an employee is treated less favourably, because of his previous actions.

Julia was selected and offered the vacancy; she has not been discriminated as yet by the employer.

There are two types of job offers that an employer can make these are non conditional and conditional offers. The difference between these two is that the contact is formed under the unconditional offer immediately when the employee accepts the unconditional offer unconditionally even if the employee has not begun working. Where as conditional job offer contract not formed, unless the conditions are met.

Although if an employer allows an employee to start working while the condition has not yet been met then it would and could be argued that the condition does not apply.

The contract is legally enforceable agreements between two parties.

A contract is an agreement between two parties enforceable by law. A contract of employment is a contract of service and comes into being when an employee agrees to work for an employer in return for pay.

Client begun working while under the condition put forward by the employer. Had the employer put forward a different condition such as the employer receiving a good reference but allowed the client to start working then it would be as though the condition no longer applies but here the employer has set the condition of line managing eight other sales reps which the client agreed to practically.

Upon formation of the contract which as above is formed as soon as an unconditional offer is accepted and under a condition offer when the conditions are met then it is the employee’s right to be supplied with written particulars of the key terms of employment. This document must be provided no later than two month of starting employment of a person whose employment continues for a month or more.

The client did not receive a written contract even though the client requested it for three months. Although it is not compulsory to have a written contract it is an employee’s statuary right to receive a written statement of key terms of employment. Failing to provide the document will give the employee under Employment rights Act 1996 s. 11 to make a complaint to the employment tribunal while in employment or within three months of leaving. S. 11 also give statuary right to the employee to make a complaint if the employment tribunal if the statement is incomplete.

Employments act 2002 s 38 allows tribunal to award compensation to an employee who has not received written statement ok key terms of employment except if there are circumstances which would make the award unjust or inequitable.

The working times regulation 1998 SI 1833 regs 13 (1) subject to paragraph (5), a worker is entitled to four weeks annual leave each year. The basis of this entitlement is calculated on the assumption of an employee who works five days a week which times by four weeks is in actual twenty days.

The expressed holiday entitlement according to the client is said to be five weeks, the contract can not undercut statuary entitlements although it is possible to build on them the oral agreement of five weeks should have been given in writing as it was offered to the client and attracted the employee to agree.

While employees are proud of their general right to freedom of speech, at work there are, in fact, many constraints on this freedom.