Sweeping employment law reform to take effect immediately from March 4

SWEEPING employment law reforms are set to come into effect in less than a week.

The Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act aims to improve the security and predictability of working hours for employees on insecure contracts and those working variable hours.

From Monday, March 4, employers will have to provide employees with five core terms of employment “within five days of employment” and failure to provide the written statement of core terms within one month of employment will be a criminal offence.

Employers will have to stop using ‘zero hour’ contracts, unless there is a genuine requirement for a short-term relief/casual employee. This will particularly impact industries like tourism, healthcare, hospitality.

In addition employers must allow employees to be put in a ‘ band of hours’ that reflects the actual hours worked rather than the contracted hours. This will impact any employer who employs part-time or variable hours employees.

Finally, employers must provide a new minimum payment to be paid to employees who are not required to work on a certain day of the week or who work less than 25% of their weekly contractual hours in a particular week.

Employers that fail to provide the five core terms of employment within one month of employment commencing may be found guilty of a criminal offence. If convicted, employers could face fines of up to €5,000 or up to 12 months’ imprisonment or both.

In addition, directors, secretaries, senior managers and other officers of a corporate employer may be made individually liable for offences under the Act.

From the employer perspective, there is a concern that small to medium-sized enterprises will find the increased compliance requirements difficult to comply with. The threat of criminal liability is also unlikely to incentive start-up businesses to ramp up their employment levels. While the new Act will affect all Irish-based employers, those that rely on part-time or variable hours’ employees will be most impacted.

The Act cleared all stages of the houses of the Oireachtas in December 2018 and was signed into law by President Michael D Higgins.

It has been described as one of the most significant pieces of employment legislation in a generation.