From 6 April 2024, key changes to employment legislation are taking place. Our caseworkers and Health & Safety reps provide an overview. And this is also a good occasion to say a little about some of our other work around Health and Safety and supporting members through our casework.

  1. Carer’s Leave
  2. Paternity Leave
  3. Flexible Working
  4. Annual Leave and Holiday Pay
  5. Redundancy Protection
  6. Casework at QMUL
  7. Health & Safety at QMUL

Carer’s Leave

The Carer’s Leave Regulations 2024 come into force on 6 April 2024.  They set out the statutory scheme under which employees can apply for up to one week of unpaid carer’s leave in any 12-month period.

Key features include:

  • The right is a Day 1 employment right.
  • The right applies to employees who have a dependant with a long-term care need and want to be absent from work to provide or arrange care for that dependant.
  • Requests can be in consecutive or non-consecutive half-days or full days.
  • Employees must give notice in writing of their intention to take carer’s leave. They must confirm their entitlement to take it and give whichever is the longer of at least twice the amount of notice than the period of leave requested or three days’ notice.
  • Employers can postpone a request if the operation of the business would be unduly disrupted. In these circumstances, the employer must give notice of the postponement before the leave was due to begin — and explain why it’s necessary. The employer must then allow the leave to be taken within one month of the start date of the leave originally requested. The employer should consult the employee about rescheduling the leave.
  • Employees are protected from detriment and dismissal because they take or seek to take carer’s leave or the employer believes they are likely to do so.

Paternity Leave

After announcing proposals to make changes to paternity leave rights in summer 2023, the Government has now published the Paternity Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024. These make the following changes:

  • Employees will be able to take their two-week paternity leave entitlement as two separate blocks of one week (rather than having to take just one week in total or two consecutive weeks).
  • Employees will be able to take paternity leave at any time in the 52 weeks after birth (rather than having to take leave in the 56 days following birth)
  • Employees will only need to give 28 days’ notice of their intention to take paternity leave (reduced from the previous position that required notice to be given 15 weeks before the expected week of childbirth (EWC)).

The Regulations apply in all cases where the EWC is on or after 6 April 2024.

Flexible Working

With effect from 6 April 2024 all employees, regardless of their length of service, will have the right to request flexible working. The Flexible Working (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which were published last December, make it clear that flexible working will, for applications made on or after 6 April 2024, become a Day 1 right for all employees. Previously you needed to be employed for 26 weeks before you could request flexible working.

The Government published wider changes to flexible working last autumn. These were set out in the Employment Regulations (Flexible Working) Act 2023. 

The wider changes are:

  • Removing the requirement for employees, in their written request, to set out what effect the proposed flexibility would have on the employer’s business and how any effect could be dealt with
  • Increasing the number of flexible working requests which can be made in any 12- month period from one to two.
  • Reducing the primary time period within which flexible working requests must be dealt with (including any appeal) from three months to two months. As before, it will remain possible, by agreement with the employee, to extend this time period.

Government guidance states it is ‘expected’ that these additional changes will come into effect at the same time that flexible working becomes a Day 1 right (i.e. for applications on or after 6 April 2024).  

Annual Leave and Holiday Pay

Actions by Unison and UCU reps recently resulted in many staff at Queen Mary successfully gaining back unpaid holiday pay, an issue that particularly affected staff on fixed term contracts and those who had taken maternity leave in the last six years. 

From January 1, 2024, the Government created an entirely new system of holiday accrual and holiday pay for part-year and irregular hour workers.The Government’s guidance on these changes can be found here.

Redundancy Protection

While the university refuses to officially commit to calling the restructure a restructure, the prospect of redundancies, voluntary or otherwise is of increasing concern to UCU. The law has, for a long time, granted extra protection from redundancy to those on maternity, adoption, or shared parental leave. They have the right of first refusal for any suitable alternative roles in a redundancy situation.

From this month, this protection is being extended. The table below (from Daniel Barnett, Employment Law Barrister) sets out the current position and how it is changing.

Casework at QMUL

In addition to our campaigning work, QMUCU are also here to offer advice and representation for members who experience problems at work. This could be related to:

  • flexible working requests
  • maternity leave
  • sickness
  • probation
  • promotion
  • failure to issue contracts
  • bullying and harassment
  • or many, many other issues

Recently caseworkers are reporting a worrying increase in members being unfairly put through the adverse probation process. Additionally they have noted a significant increase in attempts to ‘manage’ staff on sick leave, many of whom hold protected characteristics, through the attendance policy. We are concerned this increase in potentially discriminatory behaviour is connected to a new HR invitation to line managers to attend monthly ‘sickness absence clinics’.

If you are experiencing an issue at work, then get in touch. Our casework surgery runs every Wednesday online from 2-5pm. Book here.

Health & Safety at QMUL

Queen Mary has a statutory duty to consult all staff about health and safety and wellbeing issues in the workplace. They are supposed to do this by either talking direct to employees or to a Health and Safety Representative acting on behalf of the employees. Both UCU and Unison have Health and Safety Reps. If you have any concern about any issue related to health, safety or wellbeing in your workplace then contact our reps.

Has an incident you have experienced at work made you ill?
Report it via the MySafety Reporting Tool.

Many of you will know that the university expects staff to report all accidents and incidents that happen at work via the only MySafety Reporting Tool. You can also use this method to report incidents of bullying and harassment if this has caused you to experience anxiety or stress or caused any other health related impact.