Weekly Issue 233

Just who is running our public services?

Ethical Consumer magazine has taken a look at the environmental and ethical track record of 20 of the biggest companies likely to benefit from the privatisation of public services. The results of their research makes disturbing reading.

Reasonably adjusted

The 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (now the Equality Act) requires employers to make “reasonable adjustments” for disabled employees in certain circumstances. In Lancaster v TBWA Manchester, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) said that it was not a reasonable adjustment to require the employer to replace subjective redundancy criteria with objective ones.

True terms

Although the law defines who is an employee and who is a worker, it can often be hard for Tribunals to decide their status in reality. In Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher and ors, the Supreme Court has said that Tribunals can disregard the written terms of a contract when they don’t reflect the true agreement between the parties.