Employment Law Blog

As we all know the default retirement of age of 65 is due to be abolished with effect from 30 September 2011. There is to be a transitional period from 6 April to 30 September during which we expected that it would be possible to proceed with the retirement of anyone who would reach the age of 65 on or before 30 September 2011.

Last week the government unveiled a consultation paper on “Resolving Work Place Disputes”. This is supposed to be a show case of the government’s ideas to reform Employment Tribunals and ease burdens on employers. There are many points in the document but nearly all of them are a bit of tinkering around the edges and they are very far from an overhaul of the system.

Did Sky have a choice on whether or not to fire Andy Gray? Sexual harassment is defined in the Equality Act as unwanted conduct of a sexual nature that has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them. Certainly Sky would have a case to answer based on press reports of his behaviour while Gray was their employee...

After all the recent interest in Miriam O’Reilly’s age discrimination employment tribunal claim against the BBC, there has been widespread media coverage this week of a very different sort of employment dispute: the row over the behaviour of Sky Sports’ presenters Andy Gray and Richard Keys.