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Monica R. Kurnatowska

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Monica Kurnatowska is a partner in the Firm's London office. She is a leading employment lawyer who is recognised by The Legal 500 and Chambers UK as a "highly respected, extremely impressive and an exceptional legal mind; she has a tremendous appreciation of the details." Monica is a member of the Consultation Board of PLC Employment Online and is a regular speaker at internal and external seminars and workshops.

This bulletin covers the period of October 2022 to March 2023 and includes a decision of the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) on the limitation period for bringing a Regulation 20 claim under the Transnational Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 1999 and two interesting Employment Appeal Tribunal decisions considering: (i) whether the CAC has jurisdiction to hear complaints post Brexit where central management is situated in the UK, and (ii) whether the duty to inform and consult arises where collective redundancies are happening in multiple European Economic Area states but there is no common rationale for the redundancies.

Restructuring is commonly used by employers to weather the economic storm. For a dismissal to be fair, it needs to be for a fair reason (which includes redundancy) and follow a fair process. However, there are additional considerations that an employer should take into account where disabled employees are affected, which, if breached, could result in financial and reputational high value claims against the employer.

Ethnicity pay gap reporting in the UK remains voluntary. For organizations that choose to report this data, the government has now published guidance on how to do so, recommending that they mirror the rules on gender pay gap reporting where possible. The big difference is that ethnicity pay gap reporting involves multiple categories.

On 17 March 2023, the government published an update on its progress in delivering its Inclusive Britain action plan that it published in March 2022. As part of that update, the government has published guidance for employers on how to take positive action to help people with protected characteristics overcome certain barriers and improve representation in their workforce without falling foul of the unlawful discrimination rules.

The European Parliament has now formally adopted the Pay Transparency Directive having reached political agreement on its provisions with the Council of the EU at the end of 2022. Its provisions are likely to enter into force in most EU member states in 2026. The measures in the Directive are significant and touch on many aspects of the employment lifecycle.

A study by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that 77% of working mothers surveyed had potentially discriminatory or negative experiences. For many, the statutory protections designed to help mothers are not effective in re-balancing the disadvantages faced. With most mothers being of working age, we explore what employers can do to tackle these issues in order to retain mothers in the workplace.

The European Whistleblowing Directive (WBD) was supposed to be implemented by the European Union’s 27 member states by no later than 17th December 2021, impacting employers with operations in those jurisdictions.
This article looks at what those key challenges are and the unique support we can offer in helping global employers harmonize their global approach to managing whistleblowing reports within the prescriptive requirements of the WBD.

The European Parliament adopted a proposal on 2 February seeking potentially far-reaching changes to the current European Works Council (EWC) Directive. These include strengthening the information and consultation rights of EWCs and improving enforcement by introducing GDPR-level fines for non-compliance and a risk of injunctions for failure to inform and consult.

The UK government has published its response to the Women and Equalities Committee’s report on menopause and the workplace. While the response accepts some of the Committee’s proposals, it also confirms that the government does not propose any legislative changes or to produce a model menopause policy or trial menopause leave.