Rojgar Job News

There is a law in Poland guaranteeing minimum pay for work. There are rules how its amount is calculated and agreed. There are also upcoming elections in October 2019 which may unexpectedly influence its amount. The national minimum pay is reviewed annually. In 2018, for a full-time employee it was PLN 2100, increased in 2019 to PLN 2250 per month. What will it be in 2020? By 15 th June each year, the government proposes to the Social Dialogue Council (formed by the representatives of trade unions – employers – government) its suggested level of national minimum pay for the following year. The Council has then 30 days to agree the amount of the increase. The new national minimum pay is then announced in the Official Journal “Monitor Polski” by 15 th September each year, whether it is agreed by the Council or, in the traditionally more likely case of there being no agreement, it is decided unilaterally by the government. However, the government cannot unilateral...

When all this is over and the UK looks back to see what we learnt from the Coronavirus crisis, maybe somewhere on the list will be a point on making law by Twitter.  #askRishi on Friday evening was an extremely brave attempt on the Chancellor’s part to engage with the detailed issues arising from the Job Retention Scheme , but it does create some interesting questions for future judicial interpretation when what employers are relying on are essentially on-the-hoof announcements with the lifespan of a mayfly.  Next stop, law by Snapchat. Personally I would rather base my business decisions on, y’know, actual law , but pending that, there was some further help for employers in the revised Covid-19 Guidance issued on Saturday morning.  This contained some clarification, some further confusion and nothing at all about what the Government must surely know to be one of the key questions on all this, i.e. the interplay between furlough and holiday (but see below)....

As anyone who has spent the last fortnight trying to apply the Government’s CJRS knows, there is currently no actual law.  Bar some guidance clearly not written by employment or HR specialists (hence indiscriminate references to workers and employees, and use of “laid-off” to mean both put on leave without pay and made redundant), pretty much everything else is speculation, inference, press comment, leaks and that chap on Twitter whose uncle heard something at a bus stop outside Parliament.  It is not a good way to make law. Nonetheless, the Great British Public is being asked to advise upon, implement and live with the consequences of a piece of law of almost unparalleled importance which is so far not even drafted, let alone in force.  When the Scheme was announced on 17 th March some rough edges were inevitable – the biggest State intervention since WW2, and all seemingly put together in about three days.  Despite that, it is our perceptio...

It is very hard to criticise the conception of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, but it is unfortunately becoming increasingly easy to take objection to the manner of its implementation.  HMRC Chief Executive Jim Harra told the BBC last week that in the preparation of the Scheme, “ time, in some senses, has been the enemy of perfection ”.  While that was probably a legitimate position when the Scheme was launched on 20 March, however, a month later it really is not. Yesterday we saw both a fourth version of the Guidance for employers and employees (v.3 only came out a week ago – will it never stop?), plus a Treasury Direction which has Rishi Sunak’s signature on it and so must be intended as the definitive statement of how the Scheme will work.  Neither document really covers itself in glory and we are left again with the impression that not all those involved are speaking to each other, reading what has already been issued or considering...

A well-known term of the CJRS is that the employee shouldn’t while on furlough do any work for the employer or provide any services to it.  A simple enough proposition, one might think, despite the unknown pundit whose wise words appear above, but as with much of this Scheme, once you get down into the weeds of it, questions inevitably arise at the margins. Here are our thoughts on some we have received: Should we cut off the email access of furloughed employees? This was based on some fairly strident Covid-19 guidance put out by the CIPD, which includes the statement that “ even tasks such as basic administration, replying to customer care emails or briefing colleagues with handover information are services…..and may count as work ”.  If HMRC later audited email folders for the relevant period and saw such activity, for example, could the employer be required to pay anything back, let alone (as the CIPD suggests) “ all the payments under the Job...

In a previous blog, in a world before the coronavirus hit Europe, we noted the social elections that Belgian employers have to organise in 2020 [here] for the appointment of employee representatives to the Works Council and Health & Safety Committee. Being a representative of that sort (and also being a candidate for that role) gives wide-ranging protections against detriment and dismissal. As a consequence, with the social elections comes a Belgian peculiarity, the “occult period”. This is a period of 65 days, ending ultimately on 30 March, over which employees can stand as candidates in those elections but before the candidate list is communicated to the employer. It is therefore unaware who has that protection and who doesn’t. Practical consequence: all terminations are put on hold until April. Because of the Covid-19 crisis however, the social elections have been postponed, probably until the second half of November at the earliest. Mercifully the occult period...

There are four main moving parts to bringing people back to work, only two of which were mentioned by the Prime Minister in his speech last night. He made clear very properly the continued focus on health (particularly the R factor – the rate at which one person with the virus is likely to infect others) as the determinant of steps out of lockdown and that those steps would not be dictated by mere hope or (slightly less credibly) financial pressures. He could not say anything else. But before his words were even cold, commentators had seized on the tension between his suggestion that workers who cannot work from home (especially construction and manufacturing) should be “actively encouraged” to return to on the one hand, and his advice that they avoid public transport on the other. Walk or cycle if you can, he said brightly, surely aware that for the vast majority of commuters this suggestion is at best of academic interest and at worst, borderline insulting to their i...