Employment law brief: 19 December 2014

The big news last month was of course the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in Bear Scotland Ltd v Fulton UKEAT/0047/13 that overtime needs to be included in statutory holiday pay, at least where it is non-guaranteed by the employer but obligatory on the employee, and at least in relation to the first four weeks. This was followed by the surprising announcement that the backing union did not intend to appeal on the vital point on which it lost, ie the ruling out of most possibilities of backdating claims for non-inclusion of overtime pay. This point, on which the EAT’s decision seemed to go beyond even the employer’s interpretation of the time limit provision, has not gone away, but must now await a further challenge in another case. The EAT’s decision has been considered elsewhere in this August publication and so I will not bore you with it again. Instead, I will bore you with cases on