The Gazette 1993

JAN/FEB 1993

GAZETTE

Information on Terms of Employment

information and terms of employment and based it at least in part on the rules existing in the United Kingdom (and indeed in Ireland). This may explain why the UK relented and merely abstained on the voting (while still challenging the legal basis of the adoption of the directive). It would be foolhardy however to underestimate the importance of the new directive and it seems the directive will have a certain impact on industrial relations. Before turning to the directive it is proposed to look at the existing Irish law. The Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act, 1973 introduced the concept of a written statement of certain terms of employment into Irish law. This was a straight forward copy of the then existing UK Contracts of Employment Act, 1963. The 1973 Act did not apply to certain employees namely: (a) employment of an employee who was normally expected to work for the same employer for less than eighteen hours in a week; (b) an employment by a close relative of an employee in the employer's household and whose place of employment was a private dwellinghouse or farm in which both resided; The Existing Irish Law (d) employment in the Defence Forces; (e) membership of the Garda Siochana; (f) sea crew, under the Merchant Shipping Acts. As we shall see later the directive will involve a major change in the (c) employment in the Civil Service;

scope of existing Irish law.

The substantive requirement of the Act of 1973 is that an employee may require his employer to furnish him with a written statement containing all or any of the following particulars:

(a) date of commencement of his employment;

(b) details of his pay, including

overtime, commission and bonus and the method of calculating same;

(c) whether pay is to be weekly, monthly or otherwise;

by Ciaran O'Mara

(d) conditions about hours of work and overtime; (e) terms and conditions relating to holidays and holiday pay; (f) conditions relating to incapacity to work due to sickness or injury and sick pay; employee is obliged to give and entitled to receive to determine his contract of employment, or if the contract of employment is for a fixed term, the date when the contract expires. If the employee requests these particulars from the employer s/he must be furnished within one month with the written statement containing particulars. The Act of 1973 provides an alternative method of information, contained in Section 9 (4) of the Act, which allows an employer to refer the employee to a document containing the particulars requested by the employee under section 9. The employee must have reasonable opportunities granted to him during the course of his employment to consult the document, or it must be reasonably (g) the period of notice which the

The EC Council of Ministers adopted the first significant directive affecting labour law apart from health and safety issues on the 14 October, 1991 under the Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights for Workers agreed at Strasbourg in 1989. The title of the directive is "Council Directive of 14 October, 1991 on an employer's obligation to inform employees of the conditions applicable to the contract or employment relationship" 91/533/EEC. The directive must be implemented not later than 30 June, 1993. As is well known, British antipathy to any developments in employment legislation at European level since the election of the Thatcher Government in 1979 led to a freeze on practically every Community proposal in this area. The tide, however, has begun to turn and the other eleven member-states adopted the Social Charter in 1989 and also adopted an agreement on social affairs in the Treaty on European Union signed at Maastricht.

Cleverly, the European Commission proposed the new directive on