{"id":12566,"date":"2017-06-13T12:13:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T11:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=12566"},"modified":"2017-06-13T14:32:04","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T13:32:04","slug":"blame-it-on-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=12566","title":{"rendered":"Refuse workers overtime pay victory"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Unite has accused Veolia Environmental Services of hiding behind Brexit when it failed to incorporate overtime pay into annual holiday pay citing \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Brexit legal uncertainty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite hailed an employment tribunal ruling last week as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098landmark victory\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 which will have implications for the union\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s several thousand members working on French-owned Veolia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s council waste and refuse contracts across the UK.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite said that employment Judge Skehan found that the voluntary overtime worked on test cases pursued by Unite Legal Services was part of members\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 normal pay, because there was an intrinsic link between the overtime and their role, and because it was performed with sufficient regularity to be part of normal pay.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Despite Veolia having claimed Brexit as the reason for not incorporating overtime pay, when it came to the hearing the company did not put forward any legal arguments to back up that \u00e2\u20ac\u0098spurious\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 contention.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis is a significant landmark case which exposed Veolia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spurious reasons of Brexit and last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s referendum for not conforming to European Union law,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Fiona Farmer, Unite national officer for local government.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnite Legal Services took test cases to the Watford employment tribunal which found in our members\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 favour \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and we will now be seeking a national agreement with Veolia covering all holiday pay issues,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she added.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As a result, voluntary overtime must be included in the calculation of the successful claimants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 holiday pay for the first 20 days of their holiday each year in accordance with EU law.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Contractually guaranteed overtime should also be included for the first 28 days based on long established UK law, which Unite said Veolia was forced to concede on day two of the hearing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis judgment will have widespread implications for the several thousand members we have working for Veolia Environmental Services across the UK, who should be getting average holiday pay and could be in line for backdated payments,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Fiona.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe do question why the company spent more than two years and enormous legal bills fighting this flagrant lack of acknowledgement of EU law,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she added.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The ruling from Watford employment tribunal covers Veolia contracts for Bromley and Camden councils.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite said there are over a hundred more employment tribunal cases being handled by Unite Legal Services in different tribunals for members on other Veolia contracts.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite warned that there are thousands more claims that can and will be lodged, if Veolia does not wake up and work with the union to resolve all members\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 holiday pay issues.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unite has accused Veolia Environmental Services of hiding behind Brexit when it failed to incorporate overtime pay into annual holiday pay citing \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Brexit legal uncertainty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. &nbsp; Unite hailed an employment tribunal ruling last week as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098landmark victory\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 which will have implications for the union\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s several thousand members working on French-owned Veolia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s council waste and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[150,744,218],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12566"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12569,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12566\/revisions\/12569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}