It’s not often you get a Supreme Court decision in employment law, writes professor & barrister Ian Smith in this week’s NLJ
Smith, of Norwich Law School, UEA, dives into the issues of fire and rehire in the recent Tesco Stores v USDAW case, as well as three other recent cases for further exploration in his employment law brief.
Smith writes: ‘The judgment serves a useful function in approving the ‘PHI [permanent health insurance] cases’ (as we know and love them, holding that if extensive sickness cover is promised, the employer cannot later try to wriggle out of it) and confirming that the basic principle behind them can apply more generally.’
He also covers cases on the overlap between incapability and misconduct in unfair dismissal, where a charity worker threatened to punch someone in the head; restrictions on expression of religion or belief, where a teacher misgendered a pupil; and the question of whether a belief is worthy of respect, where an employee expressed the view that Muslims should be deported.
