Holiday Pay Calculations
Back in May, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) gave judgment on questions referred to it in the case of Lock v British Gas Trading Ltd. The issue was whether the calculation of holiday pay should include a payment in respect of commission that the employee would normally have earned if he or she were at work. This case has been remitted to the UK employment tribunal and is due to be heard in February 2015. The tribunal will decide whether UK law can be interpreted to implement this European decision and will determine how commission should be calculated. Along similar lines, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) more recently gave judgment on the conjoined cases of Bear Scotland Ltd v Fulton, Hertel (UK) Ltd v Wood and Amec Group Ltd v Law. It held that non-guaranteed overtime payments must be taken into account when calculating holiday pay. However, workers can only make claims for underpaid holiday pay within three months of payment having been made in respect of their last holiday.
Collective Consultation
We eagerly await the decision in the Usdaw v Woolworths case, which was heard by the CJEU on 20 November 2014. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) was granted permission to appeal this summer's EAT judgment that employers should consult collectively whenever planned redundancies add up to 20 or more across the whole of the UK business, not just where there are 20 or more proposed redundancies "at one establishment." This ruling has significant consequences because employers will have to look at their business as a whole when making multi-site redundancies. It is anticipated that it will take over six months for the CJEU verdict to be published.
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