HUMAN RESOURCES NEWS BULLETINS

Changes in Employment Legislation

This update includes:

• The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007
• Changes to the National Minimum Wage from 1 October 2007
• Changes to Statutory Holiday Entitlement from 1 October 2007

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill received Royal Assent on 26 July 2007 and is new legislation that will affect you as an employer. The Act is called the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 and abolishes common law liability for corporate manslaughter and creates a new offence which is to be called “Corporate Manslaughter” in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and “Corporate Homicide” in Scotland. 

Under the new law companies, organisations and, for the first time, Government bodies face an unlimited fine if they are found to have caused death due to their gross corporate health and safety failures.

Employees of companies, consumers and other individuals will be offered greater protection against corporate negligence. The new law will focus the minds of those in companies and other organisations by ensuring that they take health and safety obligations seriously.

An organisation will be guilty of an offence if the way in which its activities are managed or organised —

(a) causes a person’s death, and

(b) amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the deceased. 

The key emphasis of this Act is that responsibility is being very much directed at senior management and you would be wise to review how your health and safety is managed as you need to be confident that the necessary training has been undertaken and that relevant procedures, etc. are in placed and followed. 

Also, this will sit alongside existing laws in this area, the principal of these being the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 (HSWA) which imposes general duties on employers. The Act specifically contemplates prosecutions under both the Act and health and safety legislation. An organisation convicted of corporate manslaughter may then also be charged with a health and safety offence arising from the same circumstances . 

There is a brief overview of this Act on our website (click here) or you can download the actual full act: 

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2007/20070019.htm

However, this Act has a significant impact upon your duty of care relating to your employees who drive in the course of their work. Therefore, to help you understand your responsibilities in this respect please see our article on Work Related Driving on our website.

Change to National Minimum Wage from 1 October 2007

There are significant increases to the National Minimum Wage as follows:

• Adult Rate (workers aged 22 and over ) from £5.35 to £5.52
• Development Rate (for 18 - 21 year olds) - from £4.45 to £4.60
• Development Rate (for 16 - 17 year olds) - from £3.30 to £3.40

Change to Statutory Holiday Entitlement from 1 October 2007 

This is an overview and a full article can be found in our July 2007 newsletter available to download from our website

• The Statutory holiday entitlement starts by a phased-in period from this date increasing the total holidays to be 24
• This means a minimum of 16 days holiday entitlement plus the 8 Public and Bank Holidays
• This will increase to 28 from 1 April 2007, i.e. 20 days entitlement plus the 8 Public and Bank Holidays
• This affects the calculations for part-time employees whether or not they usually work on bank holidays
• This will not be excluded from the calculation of average working hours under the Working Time Regulations
• There will be no qualifying period for the additional entitlement
• Partial days need not be rounded up to the nearest full day

For an informal chat about any of these changes or any other people management issues you may have, just call Carol

Published: Sept 2007
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