Jun
02
The Financial and Ethical Rights of Employees
At some point in their lives, everyone is going to be employed. Even if it’s only for a short amount of time, it helps to know your legal rights when in the workplace. It’s surprisingly commonplace to find employers using their financial clout as leverage, or a bargaining tool, when dealing with their employees. As a result, being prepared and well-informed is of paramount importance in order to avoid getting cheated in the future.
Employee rights can be broadly split into two categories: financial and ethical. The law in this area is quite complex, but a quick summary is always useful as a base to research further. The employer has two main duties and obligations with regards to their employees: the duty of care and the duty to pay wages, which are used for ethical and financial rights respectively.
Financial Rights
When it comes to this area of law there is not much difficulty. The employer has no obligation to give an employee any work to do, however they [i]do[/i] have an obligation to pay wages. Should they not pay wages, or unlawfully deduct any sum from them, this will be constituted as breach of contract and employees will be able to sue for damages. Upon (unfair) dismissal, paid leave, or redundancy, wages also need to be paid that would otherwise be missed otherwise the employer can be sued for the same reasons as before.
Ethical Rights
In comparison to the aforementioned rights, ethical employee rights are much more complex and varied, and many books have been written on the subject. The most important type of these rights though are those relating to harassment and discrimination in the workplace. This is much more prevalent than most believe it to be, but in the past few decades great steps have been taken to address the issue. European Law has reams of cases and rights that individuals can rely upon, and the protections cover almost any conceivable form of discrimination.
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