A new CIPD publication, 'Working Time Regulations' is being launched today, Wednesday 25 October 2000, at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) National Conference in Harrogate, the second edition of this guide provides up-to-the-minute answers to those most frequently asked questions about application of the working time directive.
Questions such as
- 'Is it illegal to work more than 48 hours?'
- 'Are casual employees entitled to holidays?'
- 'Is it necessary for someone to have a lunch hour?'
many more are answered in this timely new edition written by leading employment lawyers working for Hammond Suddards Edge.
"Working Time Regulations is particularly helpful in interpreting how employment tribunal decisions are clarifying grey areas of the working time regulations 1998," says Sue Nickson, a partner at Hammond Suddards Edge and Head of its Employment Unit.
For example whom do the regulations include when they refer to 'workers'.? The book provides guidance on such key issues of definition. As Sue Nickson says, "The term worker is drawn very widely and includes agency, casual, temporary and freelance workers. The only exceptions are the genuinely self-employed."
Problems of definition feature strongly in employment tribunal cases around the working time regulations. In Campbell & Ors v Alan Frost (Pattern Makers) Ltd, eight people working on a self-employed basis for a company claimed entitlement to holiday pay under the working time regulations. They won the case as the tribunal found they were workers and therefore could claim the rights afforded by the 1998 regulations.
Apart from examining how the working time regulations are applied in different situations the new edition of Working Time Regulations also looks at the amendments to the 1998 regulations which came into force in December last year. The book examines the likely impact of future legislative developments such as bringing presently excluded groups of workers – such as junior doctors and transport workers – within the remit of the Working Time regulations.
