We round up the latest employment news.
HMRC asked to publish list of all employers receiving furlough grants
To help combat fraud, the Public Accounts Committee has asked for HMRC to publish a list of the names of employers claiming under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme by the end of January 2021. You can find out what information will be published here.
Home Office updates its ‘right to work’ guidance
The Home Office has updated its employer guidance about right to work checks. The new version provides:
• An update on right to work checks for European Economic Area (EEA) and Swiss nationals from 1 January – 30 June 2021 – referred to as a ‘grace period’
• An overview of the new routes under the 'new points based system'
• The temporary adjusted right to work checking process that has been permitted during coronavirus.
In relation to the grace period, the guidance confirms that EEA nationals can choose to evidence their right to work via online confirmation of their status under the EU settlement scheme, or under the new points based system. Alternatively, they can continue to use their national ID or passport alone until 30 June 2021.
Employers can’t insist that they use the online service or discriminate against those who wish to use their passport or national identity card.
Tesco and Pizza Hut amongst 139 companies who haven’t paid workers the National Minimum Wage (NMW)
It’s been a quite a while since the government named and shamed businesses that have underpaid staff. In 2019, we speculated whether they had quietly dropped the idea.
On 31 December 2020, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy issued a press release which named 139 companies who failed to pay their workers correctly. These included Tesco and Pizza Hut.
Over 95,000 workers were underpaid a total of £6.7m – Tesco alone is responsible for over £5m of the total.
Failures to pay NMW were primarily caused by low-paid employees being required to cover their own work costs, having to pay for training, uniform or parking fees. Plus not all employers increased their workers’ pay when they moved into a different NMW bracket following a birthday.
New guidance on coronavirus and pregnant employees
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has updated its guidance on coronavirus, infection and pregnancy. It provides up-to-date data on the effect of COVID-19 on pregnant women which indicates that severe illness is more common in later pregnancy.
Employers must review this guidance when completing workplace assessments for pregnant staff.
Government calls on employers to spot early signs of domestic abuse
The Business Minister has published an open letter to all UK employers. In this letter, employers are asked to spot early signs that their staff may be suffering from domestic abuse, and to help them access support.
This letter follows the final report, published by the government, from the Review into Workplace Support for Victims of Domestic Abuse. The report collected evidence on what more can be done by employers and the government to tackle all forms of domestic abuse.
Agency workers don’t have an automatic right to apply for vacancies
From the first day of their assignment, an agency worker has the right to be informed by the hirer of any relevant permanent vacancies in its business. Agency workers also have the right to be given the same opportunities as a comparable worker to find permanent employment with the hirer.
But in Angard Staffing Solutions and Royal Mail v Kocur and Roberts, the Employment Appeals Tribunal said that agency staff weren’t entitled to apply for internal vacancies if these were only available to existing, directly recruited staff rather than the public.
This ruling means that agency workers are only eligible to apply for roles which are open also to external candidates.
ICO guidance on using algorithms in hiring processes
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has set out six points of consideration for organisations that want to use algorithms in their hiring processes. This is because, from the outset, training data that is fed into AI systems is influenced by human bias, and the rapid advancement of big data and machine learning algorithms is making it harder to spot patterns of bias.
The ICO says that building fairness into an algorithm is difficult, and will require consideration of both data protection and equalities law.
Guidance on gender pay gap reporting
The Government Equalities Office has published new guidance documents to help employers meet their gender pay gap reporting requirements.
The Office for National Statistics has also published its latest report on gender pay gap statistics for 2020.
For full-time employees, the pay gap fell 2.4% between April 2019 – April 2020, and for all employees, the gap fell by 1.9% within the same period. But the statistics include 22 April 2020 when around 8.8 million employees were furloughed.
Gender recognition reform
The House of Commons Library has published a briefing paper on the UK government’s consultation on the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA 2004). The paper considered whether the process for transgender people to gain legal recognition in their acquired gender needed to change.
The government’s response to the consultation is set out in their briefing paper. It notes that there’s no intention to ‘change the criteria in the GRA for legal gender recognition, meaning that a system based on self-identification is not being introduced’.
The paper also details the inquiries which have been launched, and debates scheduled on the subject of the GRA 2004 and wider issues concerning transgender equality and current legislation.
The briefing paper also deals briefly with the Scottish Government’s consultation on the same issues.
Read more – January 2021
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