From 2020 employees who suffer the death of child will become entitled to two weeks paid leave.

An employee will be protected from victimisation if they wrongly but honestly believed the allegations they made to be true, even if they had an ulterior motive for making those allegations.

An employer wanting to vary an employment contract to incorporate more onerous post-termination restrictive covenants must ensure it has evidence of valid consideration for the change and should always obtain proof of agreement from the employee; ideally in the form of signature.

When an employee resigns and claims wrongful dismissal (not constructive dismissal), but does so on notice, where there is a lengthy notice period, they have affirmed the contract and so lost the ability to claim wrongful dismissal. However, if further breaches occur after affirmation, they are entitled to count the earlier affirmed breaches and claim that cumulatively they have caused the employee to resign without notice. Their restrictive covenants also do not apply.

Taking a flexible and individualised approach to reducing sick pay for a disabled employee will help employers make out a justification defence to a disability discrimination claim.

A refusal to postpone a disciplinary because of the unavailability of the worker’s chosen companion may make a dismissal unfair.

An employer seeking to justify its discriminatory dismissal of an employee on long-term sick leave should have considered part-time working.

Is a zero-hours contract employee entitled to pay whilst they are suspended and thus not working any hours?

Where a contract of employment provided for a disciplinary process and a right of appeal against dismissal, it was implicit that a successful appeal would, without more, revive the employment relationship and extinguish the dismissal.

An employer did not discriminate when it dismissed an employee who refused to sign a copyright agreement because she held a ‘philosophical belief’ that she should own the rights to her work.

‘Sleep-in’ residential care workers are only entitled to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) when they are awake and ‘actually working’, not when they are asleep and therefore simply ‘available for work’.

Where there is a genuine entitlement to summarily dismiss, an employee cannot rely on the deeming provisions in the Employment Rights Act to get to two years’ qualifying service.

An employee who went on maternity leave was discriminated against and unfairly dismissed after her employer paused her training agreement to recoup expensive training costs.

An employee did not make protected disclosures when she complained to her employer about bullying, harassment, inappropriate behaviour and lack of managerial support over a safeguarding issue.

Where an employee was dismissed because the employer had a reasonable belief that they were not entitled to work in the UK, the employer should offer an appeal to allow the employee the chance to prove that at all relevant times they in fact had the right to work in the UK.

An employer breached its duty of care when it changed an employee’s personal password on his iCloud account.

A disabled employee who was disciplined for 60 days’ absence over a 12-month period was discriminated against because her absence arose from her disability and her employer had failed to establish that its action was a proportionate response to her absence.

Where there was no obligation to provide or accept work, and the other features of the relationship were not inconsistent with this, there was no contract of employment.

The Supreme Court has handed down its decision in the Pimlico Plumbers case which focussed specifically on the question of whether a plumber stated to be self-employed in his contract was in fact a worker. It unanimously upheld the decision of all the courts below that Mr Smith was indeed a worker.

An employer can never have reasonable or proper cause for breaching an express term of the employment contract or breaching the implied term of trust and confidence by imposing a significant unilateral pay cut on the employee.