The COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate the agenda, but employers in the UK can still expect both legislative and caselaw developments across all areas of employment law.
COVID-19 developments
As the pandemic continues, it is unclear if the government will bring in new restrictions but we certainly expect more employment law issues. A key question for 2022 is whether more employers will introduce mandatory vaccination, testing or NHS Covid pass policies. We also expect more court rulings about the furlough scheme and COVID-19 safety at work (see Employment Tribunal rulings on Covid 19 issues what can we learn). The first cases to reach the appellate courts will inevitably involve events that happened in the early days of the pandemic, but lawyers will be scrutinising decisions carefully to see what guidance can be extracted for today’s different circumstances.
We could also start to see litigation against employers who’ve implemented ‘no jab no job’ policies, although the ET system is currently so backlogged that these may not reach appellate courts in 2022. It’s interesting to look at the position in other countries where the system is faster; for example France already has a body of caselaw on mandatory vaccination (see here). Might we also see some published rulings on when ‘long Covid’ is a disability for equality law purposes?
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