A scaffolding business has been fined for health and safety breaches after a worker fell more than 10 metres through a roof.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted Mark Wilson, trading as MWS Scaffolding Services, in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, after uncovering breaches of health and safety law on a site in Waltham Forest, north east London.

Mr Wilson was fined £5,000 and ordered to pay costs of £2,566.80 at City of London Magistrates' Court after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

Administrators at off-license group First Quench have announced they're closing 381 of the company's stores and cutting 2,000 jobs after negotiations to find a new buyer collapsed.  First Quench owns a number of well-known high street chains, including Threshers, Wine Rack, Haddows, Victoria Wine and Bottoms Up.

However, Richard Fleming,of administrators KPMG, is still hopeful First Quench can shift "a significant number" of its remaining stores as "going concerns."  The Guardian reports EFB Retail may be one of the interested parties.  Supermarket chains may also be interested in cherry-picking sites.

"Unfortunately there was not sufficient interest in the 381 stores as part of the going concern sale, so we have no option but to close them," Fleming said.

Redundancy rights

If you've been made redundant recently, or you're worried about being made redundant, you should know you have a number of legal rights, including:

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said this week that serious management failings led to the death of a young boy, who drowned in a swimming pool at a Dundee leisure centre.

The seven year-old, Luke Hutton, died in September 2007 at the Olympia Leisure Complex, Dundee.  At the end of a public swimming session, another child raised the alarm that Luke was missing and his body was then found in a covered wave pool following a 40-minute search.

At Dundee Sheriff Court on Tuesday, the organisation Dundee Leisure of 30 and 34 Reform Street, Dundee, was fined £40,000 having pleaded guilty to charges under Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

There was another twist in Jordan Wimmer's £4 million constructive dismissal case against Nomos Capital founder Mark Lowe this week, as the defendant took the stand.  Lowe admitted to sending sexually explicit emails to female employees and calling Wimmer a "dumb blonde" and "decorative"; he also said he had a "marked preference" for female sales staff, which he justified as "pure commercial sense."  Wimmer also produced one email in which Lowe asked her whether an internship candidate was "cute" or "blonde."

But Lowe rejected Wimmer's claims that he'd hired escorts, who accompanied him to business meetings, and a hitman to kill her.  He also denied accusations that he made sexual advances towards Wimmer, saying he always treated her "in a gentlemanly way."

Earlier this year, an interesting case came before the Court of Appeal concerning independent contractors and sham contracts.  Miklos Szilagyi sued a company called Protectacoat Firthglow Ltd (PF).

PF specialises in the renovation of external walls and Szilagyi had worked for the company as an installer.  After a short period of training, he was told to find an assistant to work with him.  He was then asked to sign two documents: the first document was a 'partnership agreement' between Szilagyi and his assistant; the second was a services agreement between the 'partnership' and PF.

So far so good, except:

According to the Guardian, there's a good chance General Motors' decision last week to cancel the sale of Opel/Vauxhall to the Canadian Magna consortium will result in fewer UK redundancies.

Peter Mandelson met with GM Europe's acting chief executive Nick Reilly in London this week.  Reilly told him Vauxhall workers had a "good future" under GM ownership.

Unite the union issued ballot papers for potential industrial action to its 12,000-strong cabin crew membership within British Airways this week.

The ballot papers were sent on the same day BA began to impose far-reaching changes to cabin crew working practices, changes which Unite believes are not only unworkable but also contractual - and so must be negotiated, not imposed.

Employers, unions and the government joined forces yesterday to promote new guidance on preventing harassment and violence in the workplace.

The guidance, which follows a Europe-wide agreement between employers' organisations and unions, aims to give practical help and support to firms and their employees.

Harassment and violence is unacceptable behaviour by one or more individuals and can take many different forms, some of which may be more easy to identify than others:

• Workplace harassment: occurs when someone is repeatedly and deliberately abused, threatened and/or humiliated in circumstances relating to work.
  
  
• Workplace violence: occurs when one or more workers or managers is assaulted in circumstances relating to work.

Victims may suffer workplace harassment and/or violence from a number of sources, including managers, workers, service users and/or members of the public, with the purpose or effect of violating their dignity, affecting their health and/or creating a hostile work environment.

A judge in Hong Kong has awarded 18 former Cathay Pacific pilots $7.6m in damages for unfair dismissal - eight years after they were dismissed.

The BBC reports the pilots were sacked after they started a 'work-to-rule campaign' during a labour dispute.  They belonged to a group of 49 pilots, known as the 49ers, all of whom were fired.  (NB. The other 31 pilots also sued, but settled with the company.)

The labour dispute centred on the pilots' claims that they were often made to fly longer than agreed hours, with insufficient break time between flights.

At the time they were dismissed, Cathay said it was because of "frequent sick days" and "a negative attitude towards management."

But Judge Ansemolo Reyes said that "the predominant reason for the plaintiffs' termination by Cathay was their perceived participation in union activities."  The judge added: "By dismissing them, Cathay hoped to send a strong signal to other union members to comply with management's line or else face a similar fate as the 49ers."

He also ruled that the pilots were defamed by the company's statements.

Under the Disability Discrimination Act, it is unlawful for employers to discriminate against disabled people for a reason related to their disability. 

Recently in the case of Coleman v. Attridge Law, the Employment Appeals Tribunal ('EAT') held the Act also protects people who, although not themselves disabled, suffer discrimination or harassment owing to their association with a disabled person - so-called 'associative discrimination.'

A man who worked as a project manager at construction firm Balfour Beatty has been given the go ahead to sue his former employer for unfair dismissal.

Alan Dransfield, 59, was employed by the company for over four years and raised concerns over health and safety in November 2008.  Two months after blowing the whistle, he was told the company wanted to make him redundant. 

Mr. Dransfield appealed the decision and was put on leave for five months.  His appeal was ultimately dismissed, however, and he became officially redundant in June 2009.

Mr. Dransfield has now launched a claim for unfair dismissal under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998.  At a case management meeting on 27 October, a judge gave him permission to pursue a claim worth up to £300,000, which reflects his anticipated loss of earnings.

A spokesperson for Balfour Beatty commented: "Balfour Beatty takes whistleblowing cases very seriously and investigates each one following the processes we have in place."

Former Nomus Capital executive Jordan Wimmer, who is suing ex-boss Mark Lowe for sex discrimination, unlawful deduction of wages, unfair constructive dismissal, and disability discrimination, has claimed he hired a Russian hitman to kill her.

Ms. Wimmer has already claimed she was forced to watch father-of-two Lowe have a lap dance at a Burlesque nightclub in Paris and that he invited a young Thai escort wearing "hot pants and stilettos" to a business meeting.

In August, IT company Fujitsu announced 1,200 job cuts due to the difficult global economic climate.  A process of consultation with elected employee representatives of Unite union began shortly afterwards.

770 staff from the 1,200 initially targeted redundancies have already taken compulsory redundancy.  But Unite says up to 6,000 staff - nearly half of Fujitsu's UK workforce - are "at risk" of losing their jobs. 

The jobs announcement came on top of an ongoing pay freeze and plans to close the company's defined benefit pension plan to future accruals.  Unite says this would affect 4,000 UK employees and effectively reduce their pay package by an average of 20%.

[Continued from Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act - Part 1]

The other key measures in the Act include:

• Creating a Support Staff Negotiating Body to negotiate on, and agree, a framework for all schools in England to use when determining school support staff pay and conditions - as the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document does for teachers.
  
  
• Strengthening compliance with School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document to keep up the pressure on reducing teacher workloads.  Local authorities will have the power to issue compliance notices to schools which do not comply with the provisions of the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document - which will allow or require local authorities to intervene if schools do not comply.  The Secretary of State will also be given powers to direct local authorities to issue compliance notices to schools.

The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act received Royal Assent on Friday.

The Government has set a target that one in five young people undertake an apprenticeship by 2020.  It hopes the new legislation will help it meet its target, while also ensuring high quality apprenticeships.

The Act also creates a new infrastructure to oversee further education and training, by establishing Ofqual as the independent, statutory regulator for qualifications and assessment.