{"id":856,"date":"2016-06-17T20:45:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T20:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justycja.co.uk\/legal\/?p=856"},"modified":"2016-06-17T20:45:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T20:45:38","slug":"brexit-and-employment-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/brexit-and-employment-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit and Employment Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Employees in the UK benefit from employment rights from two sources. Domestic law which is UK based law in the form of Acts of Parliament\u00a0and case law, the second source of law is EU law.\u00a0Under the terms of the European Communities Act 1972, EU law has supremacy over domestic law, effectively meaning that domestic law should not conflict with EU law.
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\nA number of employment rights are derived from\u00a0the EU. Discrimination, pregnancy, maternity and parental leave, part time and fixed term workers, agency workers,\u00a0employees\u00a0insolvency rights and the rights of employees on a transfer of business are all rights which\u00a0are\u00a0derived from\u00a0EU\u00a0law.\u00a0These largely make up the majority of employee rights.\u00a0A vote in favour of Brexit, which will see the UK leave the EU, will have an impact on\u00a0employment law in the UK.\u00a0However,\u00a0it\u00a0is unlikely that\u00a0a vote in favour of Brexit would have an immediate, adverse impact.
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\nSome rights are independent and are unlikely to be affected by Brexit. The\u00a0best\u00a0example of this is the Equality Act 2010. While the Equality Act does mirror some EU Equal Treatment Directives, it is a free standing Act of the UK Parliament.\u00a0On the other hand\u00a0the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE Regulations) is partially free standing and partially not. The TUPE Regulations are the UK Government\u2019s implementation of an EU Directive. However, the 2006 TUPE Regulations do not simply mirror the EU Directive and does go further than the Directive\u00a0by supplementing service provision changes.
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\nSome employment rights are purely domestic law. Employees who have two years or more service have the right not to be unfairly dismissed. The recent right to shared parental leave allows parents flexibility in how they share the care of their child in the child\u2019s first year of life. \u00a0Both of these rights are unlikely to\u00a0be\u00a0affected by the outcome of Brexit.
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\nIf, following a yes vote for Brexit, we are no longer part of the EU and the Government removes the European Communities Act, it would remove the framework which binds EU law and domestic law and any regulations passed under it would fall away.\u00a0Areas of law\u00a0where we may see change are working time, the\u00a0TUPE Regulations 2006 and annual leave.\u00a0The Working Time Directive places a restriction of a maximum 48 hour working week, with the ability to ask employees to opt out of the requirement.\u00a0The Working Time Directive also gives employees the right to paid holidays and paid rest breaks.\u00a0Given that the Working Time Directive is purely EU law, there could be a chance that the Working Time Directive would be scrapped completely.\u00a0Under the TUPE Regulations 2006 protects employees whose employment transfers from one business to another.\u00a0If the UK was to leave the EU it is likely that the Government would seek to make it easier to harmonise terms and conditions following a transfer.
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\nIn terms of annual leave, employees in the UK currently benefit from more leave days than EU entitlement allows. However, in recent times there has been much case law from the European Court of Justice of the European Union which has caused confusion in respect of holiday pay. Recent case law relates to holiday pay which accrues when an employee is on long term sick leave and how holiday pay should be calculated with reference to\u00a0aspects such as commission, irregular hours and over time. Holiday pay is a perfect example of an area that could be completely reformed by the UK Government if we were no longer part of the EU.
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\nAny changes to be made to employment legislation depends largely on whether the next Government would want to implement any changes.\u00a0Much of the employment rights which are\u00a0derived from the EU has been in force for some time. For example the Equality Act 2010 embodies previous UK legislation, such as the Sex\u00a0Discrimination\u00a0Act\u00a0and the Equal Pay Act which goes back to the 1970s. As such, the current legislation reflects long held and accepted areas of good practice. While the Employment Tribunal does deal with discrimination\u00a0claims, many employers are conscious of the\u00a0fact that the legislation does exist and don\u2019t subject their staff to discrimination.
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\nIt is difficult to see that the Government would seek to remove legislation,\u00a0and therefore remove employee rights, which would seem like a drastic measure.\u00a0If changes are to be made it is more likely to be a gradual process, rather than a dramatic removal of legislation.
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\nEU citizens currently have the right to freedom of movement which allows them the right to work in any EU Country. If the UK was to leave\u00a0the EU then this right\u00a0falls away. \u00a0Those coming to work in the UK from outside the EU are subject to complex Visa restrictions. It may be the case that such a strict Visa regime would apply to EU nationals.\u00a0For EU Nationals already living and working in the UK, transitional arrangements\u00a0may form part of negotiations with the EU both in respect of EU citizens currently living and working in the UK and UK citizens working in other EU Counties.
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\nWhile the\u00a0impact of a vote in favour of Brexit on employment rights\u00a0is currently unclear, it does seem that a vote to leave would, in the long term,\u00a0result at least in transitional changes which will not happen over night.
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\nAuthor: Priya Cunningham at Thompsons Solicitors (see website<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Employees in the UK benefit from employment rights from two sources. Domestic law which is UK based law in the form of Acts of Parliament\u00a0and case law, the second source of law is EU law.\u00a0Under the terms of the European Communities Act 1972, EU law has supremacy over domestic law, effectively meaning that domestic law […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"846","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","en-US"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}