This Christmas Day President Michael D. Higgins signed Employment Bill into law

The key objective of the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2017, signed into law this Christmas Day by President Michael D. Higgins,  is to improve the security and predictability of working hours for employees on insecure contracts and those working variable hours.

Having considered the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2017, the President has today, 25 December, signed the Bill and it has accordingly become law.

It addresses five key issues which have been identified as being areas where current employment law should be strengthened to the benefit of employees without imposing unnecessarily onerous burdens on employers:

1. One is ensuring that employees are better informed about the nature of their employment arrangements, in particular their core terms, at an early stage of their employment. A new offence is being created where employers fail to comply with the new information requirements;
2. A second issue is strengthening the provisions around minimum payments to low-paid, vulnerable employees who may be called in to work for a period but not provided with that work;
3. A third issue is prohibiting zero-hour contracts except in limited, specific circumstances;
4. A fourth issue is ensuring that employees on low hour contracts who consistently work more hours each week than provided for in their contracts are entitled to be placed in a band of hours that better reflects the reality of the hours they have worked on a consistent basis over an extended period;
5. A fifth issue is strengthening the anti-penalisation provisions for employees who invoke or try to invoke a right under these proposals. The Bill seeks to achieve its aims through appropriate amendments to the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 and the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997.