BREXIT - What it means for Employment Law

In the wake of the news this morning it should be noted that as far as employment law is concerned, leaving the EU would make no immediate difference. This is because we have implemented all EU laws (called Directives) into our own UK law through various regulations. These will remain binding.

However, both employers and employees should be aware that there will be changes in the medium to long term as the UK will now have full freedom to repeal European employment laws. We would predict the following:

• TUPE – this is likely to remain as it is part of accepted employment protection now and has been effectively gold-plated. There may however be tweaking and a relaxation of consultation provisions which will allow easier post transfer harmonisation. This is not possible at the moment because of a European case called Daddy’s Dance Hall.
• Redundancy consultation – at the moment, collective consultation is required when 20 or more redundancies are made and this is unpopular with employers. This is likely to be diluted for example, requiring collective consultation only if over, say, 100 people are made redundant.
• Working Time Regulations – paid holiday will certainly stay and we already have minimum annual leave provisions in UK legislation.
• Legislation may be passed to reverse some of the holiday pay cases especially those which say that holiday pay continues to accrue during long term sick leave. The maximum average 48 hour working week is likely to abolished as it is generally unpopular and commonly ignored.
• Discrimination – the various discrimination heads known as “Protected Characteristics” are likely to remain as we had already passed legislation to prohibit many of these long before Europe required us to do so. However, the current law regarding uncapped compensation is likely to be abolished and an upper limit imposed. This used to be the case before we were forced to adopt European law and this has of course led to some multi-million pound awards which are of course generally unpopular.
• Family friendly rights – there are unlikely to be any reduction to family friendly rights as we have already granted more generous provisions here, foe example , up to 52 weeks maternity and shared parental leave.

As employers you may wish to consider the impact of Brexit on your own business and how this will affect your need to recruit staff or retain recently recruited employees.

Employees particularly in the banking sector may feel vulnerable at the moment because it is feared that the financial markets will be severely impacted by Brexit leading to a number of sweeping changes and likely redundancies.

As ever, please contact us for advice on any employment law issues but watch this space for employment law changes following Brexit.

Further information

To speak to a member of our employment law team, in confidence call 0113 320 5000.

Or email us directly on: employment@winstonsolicitors.co.uk