Remembrance of things past: Ian Smith reflects on echoes from the past & unravels some current employment conundrums
- Agency workers and the right to be notified of vacancies.
- Fire and rehire, but could the contract term be changed at all?
- Rolling forward pay for statutory holidays actually taken.
In the long-lost days of the Wilson government in the 1970s (which was often concerned with seeking pay accords with the unions), employment law was bestrode by the ubiquitous character, Solomon Binding. He, or his application to ‘solemn and binding agreements’ contained in collective bargains, rapidly went out of fashion in the 1980s, but the second case considered here has a curious echo of this—with an employer actually being held to an agreement made with its staff that a new benefit was meant to be binding into the future. Moreover, this was done in a common law action in the High Court, not in employment tribunal proceedings. As Brian Blessed might boom: ‘Solomon’s alive!’
The other two cases are Court of
