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14 April 2021 / Ian Smith
Issue: 7928 / Categories: Features , Employment , Tribunals
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Employment law brief: 16 April 2021

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After a busy month for the Supreme Court, Ian Smith examines the implications for employment law & the impact on other cases in the pipeline
  • Sleep-in carers and the national minimum wage.
  • Common terms of employment in supermarket equal pay case.
  • Pimlico Plumbers claimant loses on time limitation.

We have had, in the last month, two Supreme Court judgments on important employment law topics, for which we have been waiting for some considerable time. The first regularises and simplifies the hitherto-complicated question of whether sleep-in carers can ever claim payment on the national minimum wage (NMW) scales for time asleep (answer: no). The second decides whether supermarket retail assistants in shops (female) can compare their pay with distribution workers in depots (male) for the purposes of an equal value claim (answer: yes). One thing they have in common is that both potentially involved many employers beyond the individual respondents and large amounts of money. The third case considered here was not in the Supreme Court, but followed

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