Contracts of Employment Act 1963 - Act's Provisions

Act's Provisions

In its final form, the Act required a weekly hours threshold of 21 hours before an employee would fall within its protective sphere. According to William Whitlaw MP, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Labour, this was intended to exclude "people with spare-time occupations and those who do weekend jobs" and cases where "the employment relationship is not of substantial importance to the parties concerned." Those envisaged, somewhat insensitively, included twilight shift workers who were "nearly all women with domestic responsibilities." That threshold was carried into the Redundancy Payments Act 1965 and the Industrial Relations Act 1971. But for notice and terms of employment the threshold was gradually lowered and then abolished after it was found incompatible with the Equal Treatment Directive, 76/207/EEC, by the House of Lords in R v. Secretary of State for Employment, ex parte Equal Opportunities Commission.

In order to get a written statement it was necessary to wait for five weeks of employment.

Under the Act, it was a criminal offence, punishable by fine, for the employer to refuse to give the requisite written statement. But this was repealed by the Labour government in 1965.

Read more about this topic:  Contracts Of Employment Act 1963

Famous quotes containing the words act and/or provisions:

    We aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Drinking tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages, hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of interest, was now divided among a hundred; and, look where you would, there was a motley assemblage of feasting, talking, begging, gambling and mummery.
    Charles Dickens (1812–1870)