One of the changes planned as part of the Government’s Good Work Plan is for the “Swedish derogation” within the Agency Worker Regulations 2010 to be abolished from April next year.   This is causing concern to a number of our clients who use a high volume of blue collar agency workers.    They are estimating that the cost of this change will run into millions. What is the Swedish derogation? The Swedish derogation is shorthand for…

There is a risk when you comment in any way critically on reports on workplace stress that you come across as some form of Victorian mill-owner, a keen believer in cold showers, beatings and the maintenance of staff morale through the periodic execution of slackers.…

It is only a slight over-simplification to say that one key difference between an employee and a contractor is that an employee gets paid by time and a contractor by output. There are obvious exceptions, such as piece-rate or commission-based employees on the one hand, and contractors who sell their services by volume rather than product on the other, but so far as wild generalisations go, that one is pretty tame.…

On January 23, 2019, we reported that the Supreme Court had agreed to review a decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Ft. Bend County v. Davis, which would answer conclusively whether the pre-filing administrative exhaustion requirement is jurisdictional (meaning that failure to fully exhaust administrative remedies would bar litigation) or non-jurisdictional and thus subject to waiver. The Supreme Court issued its decision on June 3, 2019 and ruled that administrative exhaustion is non-jurisdictional…

As a part of the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions (“Unified Agenda”) issued Wednesday, May 22, 2019, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) announced its regulatory road map, indicating three areas of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) under which the agency intends to develop new or modified rules: access to an employer’s private property; standards to determine when students who perform work at a private college or university in connection with their…