Anyone familiar with Employment Law and Employees rights?

[El Gamo]

I'm doing some research about my work place,anyone know anything about these areas? Also, anyone know much about London Weighting? The extra £££ that are added on if you live in London. Is it a legal requirement or is it the employer's discretion? Any help would be appreciated immensly

[X]

Not blowing my trumpet or anything, but I do know my stuff about this .... what do you want to know?

[El Gamo]

How do you know about this? I would like to know what an employees rights are in EVERY work place,where I can find the information,and London Weighting, and whether this is a legal requirement or not.

[X]

I sort of do employment law for a living, that's how I know.

You can look up the legal stuff on the government website

Website of the UK government : Directgov

but the original legal text is pretty hard for people to decipher. You can go to a library and get out some books on employment law, you can speak to a Citizen's Advice Bureau, or you can speak to the HR people at your work (unless you actually want tp pay to see a good lawyer or see a bad one via 'no win no fee')

.. and unfortunately, it is not a legal requirement to pay London Weighting. The reason some companies pay it is because they have flat wage structures that they do not want to break. They appreciate that the cost of living in London is higher, so they pay people a London Weighting allowance to make up the total, but also that they can then take away if people leave London.

The added benefit is also usually that people's overtime or pension contributions are calculated without any London Allowance monies being countable. So they save a lot of money too.

I doubt you would be able to really find out what an employee's rights are in every workplace (if it was that easy, we wouldn't need so many scumbag lawyers) - this is because UK employment law is predicated on a long history of legal activity, great swathes of civil precedence which then pass to statute, imposition of EU Directives (and then susequent national legislation underneath that) etc. Not to mention the numerous Working Rule Agreements, Staff Councils and Associations, Trade Union Agreements, Comapny policies and plain custom and practice that may apply totally differently to different companies... all of which may be equally as binding as any law.

It sounds to me like to have a gripe about London Weighting .... is there anything specific I can help you with? I actually do know my stuff on this.

[El Gamo]

Yeah,some people at work only earn a little above average wage. Average wage is for unskilled jobs right?This ia a dam skilled job. And also, is there any legislation in place which means a person is entitled to concessions on travel>? Could you find me a good link which gives me information about London Weighting please?

[El Gamo]

Also,our company is moving to more central London,which is a HUGE move in terms of travel,some people only live 5 minutes away,and the move could mean up to 1 hour travel:can pay be increased on these grounds? There must be somethig in place for when a company moves locations?