At the end of last month, as the weather took a turn for the worst and had us all reaching for our winter coats and thermals, members of the British National Party ( BNP ) had even more reason to feel a little uncomfortable. The names and contact details of more than 10,000 past and present members of...

Last week saw economic Armageddon displaced from the news headlines by the furore over the ill-judged messages left by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross on Andrew Sachs’ answerphone. The messages involved lewd remarks about Sachs’ grand-daughter Georgina Baillie. The pre-recorded programme that was aired...

Out of the quagmire of the crisis in the global financial markets, the woes of HBOS and the heroic rescue by Lloyds TSB came an interesting topic for this blog, particularly to employees of the banks who are now facing the prospect of compulsory redundancies. Apparently the deal struck between HBOS and...

The pictures in the news of employees leaving the offices of Lehman Brothers carrying boxes containing their personal possessions and saying emotional farewells to colleagues provide a very powerful image of the distress caused to employees when their employer goes bust. In the US Lehman Brothers filed...

Selina Scott's Employment Tribunal claim of age discrimination against Channel Five has attracted significant media attention. She alleges that Channel Five withdrew an offer to her of a valuable contract to cover for Natasha Kaplinsky when she is on maternity leave. Selina Scott, who is 57, alleges...

The Government has announced plans to outlaw the practice under which restaurants pay staff a basic wage below the national minimum wage and make up the rest of it in tips left by customers. New law The new law is set to come into effect next year and was announced on the tenth anniversary of the National...

Earlier this week, the Times Online reported that a worker at Marks & Spencer ( M&S ) had been suspended after he “blew the whistle” on M&S’s plans to cut its enhanced redundancy payouts by up to 25%. According to the Times Online, the new redundancy terms come into force on Monday, 1 September...

The UK Border Agency is now part way through introducing the Points-Based System (the PBS), details of which we provided in our article on the 3 of June. The launch date for Tier 2 of the PBS, which will replace the work permit scheme, is now set for the third week in November 2008. The UK Border Agency...

Name of weekly column: Speechly Speak Name of this week's contributor: Anne-Marie Balfour , solicitor, Speechly Bircham Last week the Government announced new plans to protect vulnerable workers in what it described as “dark corners of the labour market where rogue employers seek to mistreat their...

Not for the first time this year, the UK has been put it in its place by the European Court of Justice (the ECJ) over its interpretation of EU equal treatment legislation. It's now generally the case that employees are protected from discrimination relating to themselves or an associate (e.g. family...