Law Society President Michele O’Boyle has said that employment lawyers will be acutely conscious that many of our current employment laws were enacted to deal with relatively normal times.
Their applicability to the current business environment raises unique and possibly unintended consequences, the President said in a bulletin to the profession.
The Protection of Employment Act 1977 places specific obligations on businesses proposing to effect collective redundancies.
Obligations
These obligations include an information and consultation exercise with the representatives of the potentially impacted employees for a period of at least 30 days prior to issuing any notice of dismissal.
An employer that contravenes these provisions in normal circumstances is guilty of an offence and liable to fines, but compliance in the current environment could lead to otherwise-avoidable insolvencies.
The President of the Law Society has raised this issue, with input from the Employment & Equality Law Committee, in a letter sent to the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Regina Doherty.
Wage Subsidy Scheme
Changes to the Temporary Covid-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme were announced by Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe, on 15 April.
The Scheme is the initiative put in place by Government to encourage and support employers to continue employing staff during the current crisis.
The first change is that employees who earned over the equivalent of €76,000 a year – or an average net weekly income of €960 a week – are no longer considered ineligible for the initiative if their income is now below these ceilings.
Bonus
This is an important change for employees who earned more money in January and February (for example, because of a bonus) than they are now getting paid.
Employers can make applications for people who fall into this category right away.
The second major change to the Scheme is that the subsidy is being increased from 70% of net average earnings to 85% from 4 May.
Lower paid
This change will impact most on lower paid people and it will increase what they receive, based on a high subsidy paid through the scheme.
These changes are helpful in addressing some of the anomalies that exist within the initiative. The most up-to-date information on the Scheme is available in a leaflet published by the Revenue Commissioners on 16 April.