UK Employment Hub 

The Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018 was given royal assent on 13 September 2018, having started out in July 2017 as a Private Member’s Bill subsequently supported by the government.

The Act will offer, as a day one right, two weeks’ leave to any employed parents who lose a child under the age of 18 or who suffer a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Employees will also be eligible for statutory bereavement pay if they meet certain criteria, including that they have been employed for at least 26 weeks, ending in the week of the child’s death, and have given the correct notice.

Bereavement leave must be taken within 56 days of the child’s death and parents who have lost more than one child will be entitled to take leave in respect of each child.

The Act provides that regulations will be made in due course, setting out how parental bereavement leave and pay will be taken, and the eligibility criteria. This will include details of notice requirements, whether leave can be taken in separate blocks and whether employees who are not the biological parent of a child (but who have been significantly involved in caring for the child, such as step-parents) will also qualify for leave and pay.

The rights provided by the Act are expected to come into force in April 2020, but this will be confirmed by the regulations.

Under current legislation, employees have the right to take a reasonable amount of unpaid time off work to make arrangements following the death of a dependant. However, the cases on this limit the amount of time off to one or two days at most, save in exceptional circumstances. The change in law is therefore the first time in the UK that specific bereavement leave has been made both a legal right for up to two weeks and paid.

Employers may already have in place a policy on bereavement. Acas has published a  guide to managing bereavement in the workplace, which is available at http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4977

After the regulations have been published, employers should consider reviewing any existing policy or putting one in place, and should ensure that managers and HR are trained on the new rules.

Fathers must be given drastically improved rights or the Government’s shared parental leave policy risks failing entirely, experts have warned.

The policy, three years old this week, is meant to allow fathers to be more involved in their children’s early years and mothers to return to the workplace sooner.

But the latest official estimates suggest that as little as 2pc of eligible parents have so far taken up the offer, with a lack of awareness and equal pay issues being blamed.

Read more here – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/could-paying-dads-stay-home-turn-round-failing-shared-parental/

It’s been a busy few weeks for judgments; we round up the most recent discrimination cases:

When is cancer a disability?

What happens if an employer does not know an employee is pregnant when deciding to dismiss her but finds out before the dismissal takes effect?

Was forfeiture of LTIP awards unlawful age discrimination?

Click here to read the round up.

In this issue we look at some of the key employment law developments that have been taking place over the past month. In our case law review we take a look at ‘deemed disabilities’ under the Equality Act following a recent EAT judgment. We also look at what happens if an employer does not know an employee is pregnant when deciding to dismiss but finds out before the dismissal takes effect. The impact of the new taxation of termination payments coming into force from 6 April 2018 and the sponsor licence reporting process to be mindful of when involved in mergers and acquisitions are also covered.

https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/newsletters/2018/march/29/uk-employment-law-roundup/uk-employment-law-round-up-march-2018