Contractual

Fixed Term Contracts
Transfer of Undertakings – TUPE (April 2006)
Pension Rights (April 2006)
Temporary Agency Workers Directive
Annual leave Entitlement

1.Fixed Term Contracts

The fourth anniversary of the Fixed Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002.This Means that any employee who has been on a fixed-term contract (or a series of fixed-term contracts) for four years, becomes a permanent employee, from 10th July 2006.

The employee must (within one month of the fourth anniversary) give the employee a statement of changes to his terms and conditions of employment – so as to provide information as to the length of the relevant notice periods rather than the date of expiry under a fixed term.
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2. Transfer of Undertakings – TUPE (April 2006)

Liability for redundancy, notice and other payments to employees of insolvent companies are not transferred to the transferree.
Contract out – or contracting in – are covered by TUPE.

Key points are: Variations to contracts of employment are void unless they satisfy strict criteria.
Information between the parties, and the parties and the employees is a legal requirement and failure can lead to financial penalties.
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3. Pension Rights (April 2006)

Where a member of an occupational pension scheme leaves with at least 3 months qualifying service, but no right to an actual pension from the scheme, they will now be entitled to have the cash sum transferred to another pension scheme as opposed to only getting a refund of their contributions as previously. With the transfer, they then benefit from the contributions of their employer as well as their own.
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4. Temporary Agency Workers Directive

Expected to be confirmed imminently via the European Parliament, an agency worker is entitled to equal treatment (which means at least the basic working and employment conditions that would apply to the worker concerned if they had been recruited directly to occupy the same job) after 12 weeks in a given job.
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5. Annual leave entitlement

For leave years starting on or after April 1st 2009 the annual leave entitlement is increased to 5.6 weeks (28 days including Statutory Holidays etc.).
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