A quarter of employers believe that workers over fifty are too old for their jobs, according to a joint study by Eversheds law firm and Cranfield School of Management.

The survey of one thousand individuals, comprising seniormanagers and HR professionals, found that age-related stereotypes persist in most workplaces.

Almost a third of respondents viewed older workers as unreliable, unskilled and less amenable to change. Younger employees, on the other hand, were thought to be less loyal to their organisations and more likely to take sick leave.

The survey also revealed a worrying lack of preparation by employers for forthcoming age-discrimination laws, which enter into effect in October 2006.

Just twenty percent of firms had undertaken any preparation at all for the new legislation, whilst twenty percent felt that their board members or senior managers were not committed to tackling ageism in the workplace.

Audrey Williams, an employment law partner at Eversheds, said: “In just twelve months, employers will be liable if their employees take decisions based on an individual’s age. From these findings it would appear that businesses have got a mountain to climb during the next twelve months if they are going to change negative attitudes towards age, which appear to be ingrained in UK workplaces.

“What is of particular concern is that these attitudes are present at the very top of an organisation and among HR professionals, suggesting that some businesses simply won’t act until they are faced with an age discrimination claim.”

New software helps employers to spot which workers are sneaking additional days off around the weekend.

Dubbed ‘long weekend syndrome’ by employment lawyers, ninety percent of firms say that Monday and Friday are the most common days for sickness absence.

In a survey of over six hundred employers, carried out by Employment Law Advisory Services (ELAS), sixty-seven percent cited Monday as the worst day for sickness whilst twenty-three percent said that Friday saw the most absences.

Pam Rogerson, head of personnel at ELAS, said: “Everyone suffers from the Monday morning blues from time to time.

“But some people are taking this to extremes, not necessarily taking a lot of time off sick over the course of a year, but making sure they only ever fall ill around a weekend.”

In a bid to tackle the syndrome, ELAS has developed Employersafe - a new piece of software capable of identifying suspicious absence patterns.

Pam Rogerson explained: “While managers might have a good idea which staff suffer from Long Weekend Syndrome, few have the time to go through their records and count exactly when they are off sick.

“Employersafe does that for them, spotting patterns such as only ringing in sick on a Monday, or always falling ill after a bank holiday.”

There are a number of payroll matters that must be observed when an individual starts or finishes employment.

When someone starts it is necessary to ensure that they are correctly set up on the payroll. When they finish employment it is necessary to ensure that the correct PAYE deductions are applied to termination payments and that they are issued with a form P45. It is possible that payments may be made after the date of termination, and there are special rules for dealing with the PAYE liabilities arising from this.

This topic covers all these issues, as well as outlining what happens when someone dies.

1. How well an employer completes the starting and leaving procedures for an employee largely dictates whether the correct payroll deductions are applied.
2. An employer must check that every new employee has the right to work in the UK.
3. An employer must ensure they have an NI number for every new employee.
4. An employer must check a form P45 before using the information it contains to set up a new payroll record.
5. If an employee does not have a form P45 they must be asked to consider signing a form P46 before their first payday.
6. A very useful piece of personal information, apart from an employee’s name, address and NI number, is their date of birth.
7. An employer must check an employee’s age to ensure that they are paying the correct National Minimum Wage.
8. A new employee may be entitled to statutory sick pay if they are sick during the first day at a new job.
9. Any termination payment that arises out of the employee’s contract or terms and conditions is liable to PAYE deductions.
10. Pay in lieu of notice is liable to PAYE deductions if it is expressly allowed for in terms and conditions, or it is the employer’s usual practice to pay in lieu, or the management reserve the right to pay in lieu in terms and conditions.
11. An enhanced redundancy package,paid by reason of genuine redundancy, may not be taxable as long as it does not exceed £30,000.
12. An employee is statutorily entitled to payment in lieu of statutory annual leave under the Working Time Regulations.
13. An employer cannot recover an advance or a loan, etc., from termination pay unless the employee has already agreed this in writing.
14. A tax refund withheld because an employee is involved in a trade dispute must be paid to the employee when they leave.
15. An employee should be issued their form P45 the day they leave.
16. Any national insurance certificates should be returned to employees when they leave, with the exception of certificate of deferment on form CA2700.
17. A form P46(Car) must be sent into an employer’s PAYE tax office when an employee with a company car leaves.
18. A payment made after the date of termination is liable to tax at basic rate and to NICs. The earnings period used depends on the type of payment.
19. Form P45 should not be re-issued when payments are made after the form has already been given to a leaving employee.
20. A payment made after leaving which is liable to NICs is also liable to student loan deductions, if these apply.
21. An employee who has signed a form P38(S), as a student working during term holiday periods only, is not given a form P45 when they leave.
22. A retiring employee who is transferring to an employer’s pension payroll is given form P160 instead of form P45.
23. A one-off report must be sent to an employer’s PAYE tax office when a leaving employee has a termination package which includes non-cash benefits and is, or is expected to be, in excess of £30,000.
24. There are a number of special procedures that must be followed when an employee dies such as whether final payments are liable to tax or NICs, issuing form P45 and making payments to a deceased employee’s personal representatives.

On 11 May 2005, the European Parliament voted in favour of a report produced by its Committee on Employment and Social Affairs on the European Commission’s proposal to amend the Working Time Directive 93/104/EC.

UK opt-out should go

On the 48-hour working week, the commission proposed to preserve member states’ right to allow individuals to opt out while tightening up the conditions for its application when there is no collective agreement in force or no such agreement can be concluded.

The committee considers the main aim of the Directive to be to guarantee the health and safety of workers. Where the commission was seeking to strike a balance between the protection of workers’ health and safety and the need to give companies more flexibility in the organisation of working time, the committee considers it necessary to strengthen the protection of workers’ health and safety despite the challenges of new forms of organisation of working time.

The committee finds that the current use of the opt-out in the UK is problematic and has led to abuses in two respects: the damage to workers’ health and safety (from working excessive hours) and the individual worker’s freedom of choice (the worker having no real freedom of choice in the decision to opt out of the 48-hour week if the employer requires it). It is proposed that the UK opt-out must end within three years of the amended Directive coming into force.

On-call and “working time”

The commission proposed to alter the definitions of working time, so that the inactive part of on-call time was not considered “working time”. The committee accepts that having to consider the inactive part of on-call time as “working time” has posed financial problems and serious difficulties for the smooth running of health centres in particular, and where there is a shortage of trained professional personnel. However, it does not find the commission’s solution to be the best one.

The committee proposes to keep the current definitions. But, particularly in member states where public service management is threatened by staff shortages, it should be permitted, by collective agreement or by regulation, to allow for the inactive part of on-call time to be treated in a different way when calculating the maximum working week, subject to compliance with general health and safety principles.

Reference periods and flexible working

Under the Directive, the standard rule is that the 48 hours a week minimum must be calculated using a reference period that does not exceed four months. The commission had proposed to allow member states to extend the reference period to not more than 12 months, subject merely to consultation with the social partners concerned. The committee accepts that annualisation might be acceptable under conditions guaranteeing reasoned and reasonable implementation with checks and a guarantee of protection of health and safety.

The committee wants to amends the Directive so that it requires individual member states to regulate to encourage employers to take account of the needs of workers to reconcile work with family life. In particular, measures should ensure that:

• employers inform workers well in advance of any change in working time pattern; and
• workers have the right to request changes in their hours.

Next steps

The amendments proposed by the European Parliament must now go before the Council of Ministers for approval later this year.

The report can be found at: www.europarl.eu.int

What new employment legislation can we expect in the new parliamentary session? The Labour Party committed itself in its election manifesto to deliver on the Warwick Agreement in full.

The Warwick Agreement is a set of policies for the workplace that were agreed between trade union leaders and Labour Party officials at the Labour Party National Policy Forum, held at Warwick University in July 2004. The Labour Party expressly promised to introduce the following items from the Warwick agenda in the next session of parliament:

• an extension of the four weeks’ annual leave granted to all workers by the Working Time Regulations 1998 to make it additional to bank holiday entitlement, and thus allow all workers eight extra statutory holidays in each year; and
• an increase in paid maternity leave to nine months from 2007 (and to one year by the end of the next parliament); to extend rights to flexible working and to allow fathers to take up to half of any maternity leave.

In other areas, the Labour Party was already considering bringing in new employment laws:

• to raise the national minimum wage to £5.05 per hour from October 2005 and £5.35 per hour from October 2006; and
• to narrow the pay and promotion gap between men and women.

Information vailable at: www.lowpay.gov.uk

Former trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt has admitted breaking the Sex Discrimination Act after she overruled advisers and appointed a woman to an influential job instead of a better-qualified male candidate.

Malcolm Hanney, a merchant banker took Ms Hewitt to the High Court, after he was turned down for a £9,000 a year position on the South West Regional Development Agency.

Mr Hanney used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain notes taken at his interview in which he was described as “by far the strongest candidate”. After the interview at the agency’s headquarters in Exeter, he was told that he was being recommended for the job. The panel recommended his appointment but, after Ms Hewitt’s intervention, the job went to a female candidate.

Mr Hanney wrote to Tony Medawar, the Government’s top regional development agency civil servant, to claim he thought that the appointment was “sexually discriminatory and illegal as it had ignored the interviewers’ recommendation”.

The civil servant acknowledged that the appointment was contrary to the code of practice for ministerial appointments and recommended that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) apologise to Mr Hanney.

The DTI has issued an apology and said that processes have changed to ensure that this does not happen again.

Mr Hanney said that he had brought the case on principle and was not looking for compensation.

The UK has one of the most unequal parenting arrangements in Europe, according to UNISON which said that many other countries allow leave to be divided between parents as they wish.

UNISON welcomed press reports about the new Work and Families Bill which is expected to give fathers the right to six months unpaid paternity leave, but warned that there will be limited take-up of the right if it is unpaid.

Ross Hendry, policy officer, said: “The Bill sends the right signal to employers and workers regarding the important role fathers have to play in the upbringing of their children. However our members’ experience suggests that take-up may be limited because the leave is to be unpaid and many organisations still have a deeply entrenched long hours, ‘macho’ culture that discourages fathers from playing their full role as a parent.”

UNISON is calling for a single standard twelve month right to paid maternity leave with a provision included for women to transfer some of this to her partner.

“Paternity leave should be earnings related, and parental leave extended longer and applications more flexible. So although we should not underestimate the great gains made in extending leave to parents, there is still more we can do if Britain is to match the best in the rest of Europe.”

Fathers in the UK receive only two weeks statutory leave compared to 52 weeks for mothers, giving the UK the most unequal parenting arrangements in Europe.

Small firms such as restaurants and hotels are being ‘crippled’ by Britain’s stringent employment laws, according to pressure group the Forum for Private Business (FPB).

“Tribunals are already bleeding businesses dry because they are so heavily loaded in favour of employees,” said FPB spokesman Rex Garratt. “Last year tribunals paid out £20 million to employees.”

He argued that small businesses such as restaurants, guest houses and hotels had neither the time or the money to fight at tribunal, and instead had to settle privately irrespective of their chances of winning.

“This month’s introduction of even tougher employment laws, including changes to sex discrimination regulations, mean that a system that already hits independents disproportionately will now get worse,” he said.

However John Murphy, employment solicitor at George Green solicitors, disagreed. “The perception that things are likely to get worse for independents may not be accurate, as the Government is increasingly putting emphasis on resolving grievances internally, rather than going straight to tribunal,” he said.

Small firms such as restaurants and hotels are being ‘crippled’ by Britain’s stringent employment laws, according to pressure group the Forum for Private Business (FPB).

“Tribunals are already bleeding businesses dry because they are so heavily loaded in favour of employees,” said FPB spokesman Rex Garratt. “Last year tribunals paid out £20 million to employees.”

He argued that small businesses such as restaurants, guest houses and hotels had neither the time or the money to fight at tribunal, and instead had to settle privately irrespective of their chances of winning.

“This month’s introduction of even tougher employment laws, including changes to sex discrimination regulations, mean that a system that already hits independents disproportionately will now get worse,” he said.

However John Murphy, employment solicitor at George Green solicitors, disagreed. “The perception that things are likely to get worse for independents may not be accurate, as the Government is increasingly putting emphasis on resolving grievances internally, rather than going straight to tribunal,” he said.