March 2018

A recent case has considered whether a school was entitled to summarily dismiss a head teacher for her failure to disclose a personal relationship with a convicted sex offender.

In the case of Reilly v Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council Mrs Reilly was dismissed after she failed to disclose her friendship with a convicted sex offender, to the governing body of the school at which she was headmistress (the School). Mrs Reilly brought a claim for unfair dismissal to the Employment Tribunal which she lost, and her subsequent appeals at the Employment Appeals Tribunal, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court were all dismissed.

La ministre responsable du Travail, Dominique Vien, vient tout juste de déposer le projet de loi 176 sur la modification de la Loi sur les normes du travail (LNT) et d’autres dispositions législatives afin principalement de faciliter la conciliation travail-famille.

Further to our post on the UK Government’s announcement (7 February 2018) of its Good Work plan following the Taylor review of Modern Working Practices published in July last year (the Review), the Government’s full response has now been published (the Response) together with the four consultation documents promised.

The key proposals detailed in the Response and the four consultation documents are set out below.

The Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK (ICO) has updated its Subject Access Code of Practice (the Code) which deals with requests from individuals for personal information. The amendments are mainly to reflect the Court of Appeal’s decisions in the recent cases of Dawson-Damer and others v Taylor Wessing LLP [2017] EWCA Civ 74 and Ittihadieh v 5-11 Cheyne Gardens RTM Company Ltd and Deer v University of Oxford [2017] EWCA Civ 121.

Traditional labour law is facing new challenges with the upcoming availability of flexible employment platforms (e.g. Uber/Takeaway/Deliveroo/Helpling). Society demands flexible working hours, flexible contracts and most employees are now – or in the near future – required to constantly review their skills to remain employed.

It follows from research performed by the World Economic Forum that the rise of artificial intelligence, robotics and other digital developments is displacing the primacy of human expertise in the economy.

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations surfacing in October 2017, the ‘MeToo’ movement has gained widespread traction after women and men around the world started sharing their experiences of workplace sexual harassment and sexual violence on twitter using the hashtag #MeToo.

In circumstances where one in five people surveyed by the Australian Human

The extension of collective agreements to minority union members based on the principle of majoritarianism does not unreasonably limit the constitutional right to strike.

In Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and others v Chamber of Mines of South Africa and others [2017] 7 BLLR 641 (CC).  The Chamber of Mines on behalf of various gold mining companies concluded a collective wage agreement with major trade unions (NUM, Solidarity and UASA) who together represented a majority of workers in the gold mining sector. The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) refused to sign the agreement and gave notice that it would strike for higher wages than that agreed to in the collective wage agreement.

The Financial Post interviews Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP’s patent and trademark lawyer Maya Medeiros on Artificial Intelligence’s discriminatory biases.

Despite all of the advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), experts reveal that these technologies are not immune from some of the less-than-admirable tendencies which afflict humans.

As recently reported by the Financial