Employment Law Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Employment Law - Assignment Example Subsequently, these employees had approached the Managing Director, who confirmed their dismissal, without making any further investigations into the case. He approved the dismissal by simply going through the available paper work relating to the issue. Thereafter, the company had received an ETI claim form and ET3 response form from the Employment Tribunal. Several basic and radical changes were effected to the law pertaining to workplace grievance and disciplinary issues, by the Employment Act 2002. These changes were implemented by the Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004, and became effective from 1 October 2004 (Duncan, 2005). The advantage of employing the rules and procedures for addressing disciplinary and grievance issues lies in the fact this promotes fairness and transparency. Such rules and procedures have to be stipulated in a written and unambiguous manner. The development of rules and procedures should involve the employees or their representatives (Code of Practice 1 ACAS Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures, 2009). Analysis Under the present statutory provisions, in order to qualify for protection against unfair dismissal, an employee must have completed at least one year of continuous service with the same employer, if he had been appointed prior to 6 April 2012. For those appointed after this date, the qualifying period is 2 years. The sick leave period, holiday period and maternity leave period are also included in the period of service of the employee in the company (Compact Law, 2012). In our present problem, Janice Hall had been working with the company for more than a year. Hence, she is eligible for making a claim of unfair dismissal under the provisions of the Employment Rights Act. However, Kelsey Fields cannot make a claim for unfair dismissal, as she had been working for the company for less than a year. Although, employers are not required to adhere to any statutory disciplinary procedure, the Advisory, Concil iation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) code of practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures that specify the fundamental principles relating to a fair procedure. An unreasonable failure by an employer to adhere to the provisions of this code can cause the tribunal to enhance the compensation awarded by it to the extent of even 25% (Employment Law Advice, 2011). An employee is entitled to be provided with written notice of dismissal, provided that employee has worked for at least one year in the business establishment of that employer. This is with regard to employees who had commenced work prior to 6 April 2012. However, with regard to employees who had started to work after this date, they should have worked for at least two years (Citizens Advice Guide, 2012). Although Janice had worked for 2 years, no notice of dismissal had been served upon her by the company. This constitutes a gross violation of the statutory fair procedures by the company. At the very least, employers, wh ile addressing disciplinary issues, should carry the required investigations for establishing the facts; convey to the employees the root cause of the problem; conduct a meeting to enable employees to present their case; permit the employee to be accompanied at the meeting; and allow the employee to appeal the decision. In addition, there should be no unreasonable delay and

Answer questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Answer questions - Essay Example Value based pricing focuses on the usability and value a product adds to the life of the consumer. Rather than fixing prices with the intention of covering the cost incurred in production of a product, a company fixes the price depending on the value it adds to the consumer’s life. Value can be measured in terms of increased efficiency in conducting business activities, improvement in general standards of living and other qualitative measures. Examples of businesses that use this strategy include software companies and producers of medical products. Being a computer and electronics company that seeks to solve the computing needs of our clients, we use the value that the product adds to the lives of our clients to determine how much it is worth. The company also produces a number of personalized software products for its clients. This is a good strategy because rather than concentrating on the metrics in terms of cost of coming up with a product, the company is more concerned with the utility that a client derives from it. It makes no sense for a customer to pay for a product just to cover the cost of producing it while it adds no value to his/her life. Traditional approaches of penetrating the market favor charging a low price for a product when a business enterprise is initially entering into a market niche. Chances are high that there were previously existing businesses on the market before it came in and therefore, charging lower prices may capture the attention of the target market. Once it has established a reliable customer base and gained ground in the market, it should take advantage of strategies such as increasing prices or large-scale production to boost profits. This is effective in countering competition especially because of the seemingly low profits. Skimming on the other hand favors charging high prices for products as they are being introduced into the market. The main aim

Negative Cannabis Essay Example for Free

Negative Cannabis Essay Youngsters use cannabis these days too. Marijuana users are at increased risk of impairment of memory, attention, concentration, and judgement. It is a high risk for youngsters at the age of 14 to 17 years old to use; whereas many youngsters use cannabis as often as they smoke a cigarette these days. Children start taking cannabis because they have easy access to buying this drug at a young age. This can be from their mates who are dealing. Dealers will sell to anyone for their profit and I think youngsters taking this drug shouldnt have easy access to buying it. The level of harm should make no difference. Heavy use of cannabis may cause the user to lack interest in work, relationships, and personal health, which is known as Amotivational Syndrome. Cannabis is most likely to effect women that use the drug; where it can disrupt their menstrual cycle and gives them an increased risk of fertility problem. Smoking marijuana damages short-term memory, which occurs because of a chemical found in cannabis, called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which affects the memory part of the brain called the hippocampus. When cannabis is smoked it can cause: coughing, asthma, upper respiratory problems, racing heart, feeling tense and dizzy. A user might also feel light-headed or faint. Different people that use cannabis might feel differently towards the drug, some might not even feel any effects. Clearly cannabis has complicated effects on the users memory, but its effects have been varied in many cases with the user. Whether cannabis is harmful of beneficial is still unknown and depends on the users biology and point of view, when taken. Using cannabis is heavily restricted in many countries, and in many years it may be legalised in some countries. It is legal to use in some countries like Hong Kong. From all my research that Ive done there is still a positive and negative outcome towards cannabis. That doesnt mean the drug is safe or unsafe to use. But cannabis is a well known by most people and some people believe it is a less harmful drug than others although this has not been confirmed.

Women Are Poorer Than Men

Women Are Poorer Than Men In recent years, focus has been on discovering if poverty is gendered, that is to say to what extent women may be more at threat of poverty than men. In this essay I shall be discussing how women are affected by poverty and what factors lead to women being poorer than men. Peter Townsend et al (1987) have argued that there has been a feminisation of poverty, this term may be understood in various ways, it may refer to the increased risk of poverty or the increased visibility of womens poverty it may also refer to the reconstruction of poverty from a womans viewpoint. It is difficult to compare the poverty of men and women because statistics are usually based on households and this suggests that household incomes are shared evenly between adult members. Glendinning and Millar (1987 maintain that men get a larger share in most cases and this may echo their higher earning ability and the fact that in many households men still make the decisions of how money is spent. It has been shown that women are more likely to be poorer than men, although their poverty has often been masked behind studies that focused on male-headed households Ruspini (2000). Townsend acknowledges four groups which make up the majority of the female poor, these consist of women who take care of children and other dependents they are unpaid and are unable to take up employment. There are also lone women with children who dip in and out of employment. Then there are elderly women like pensioners who live alone. There are also women with low earnings where the incomes of others in the household do not contribute towards the total household income to enable the womens income to go over the poverty line. Women unquestionably tend to experience more poverty than men because their labour both unpaid and paid is undervalued, in addition women have always experienced work in a different way from men. A private and public split has always existed where women were seen as belonging in the private sphere of hearth and home and the ideologically constructed family, whereas men were seen as belonging in the public sphere of the market and the state. In terms of work, three main reasons for why womens poverty continues have been identified, the first is because a third of all women of working age still remain outside the labour market almost twice the proportion for men, they do not have equal access to the core of the labour market and they are disproportionately represented within part-time and lower paid jobs and on average women are paid less than men. The New Labour government has aimed to maximize labour force involvement by supporting (the idea of work-life balance) and trying to make it easier for people to merge paid work and family life. In-work benefits and tax credits were introduced as incentives however the working families tax credit has been more beneficial to women earners than those whose main income comes through male partners since it is more likely to be paid through the pay packet. The development of a National Childcare Strategy was also introduced but it does not measure up to the levels of childcare provi sion to be found in most other European countries. The second reason involves the responsibility women have for most of the tasks associated with social reproduction in the way of unpaid care work and domestic labour. The third reason is the sharing of income and resources within families, in the majority of cases this does not benefit women. Individuals can be poor in households with adequate incomes. This finding has important implications for policy initiatives aimed at the relief of poverty (Pahl 1989; Kempson 1996). Other forms of inequality have persisted within the public sphere, Gillian Pascall (1997) and others have argued that while women now make up a high proportion of the public sector workforce in healthcare, social work and education, they remain under represented in senior and management positions. This is characteristic of the sticky floor where women are concentrated in specific occupations with low pay and status and what they do at work is often similar to what they do at home, although the introduction of the minimum wage in April 1999 has been beneficial to women who are dependent on low paid work but not to other wage groups. Though most health service workers are women, most of the surgeons are men and it is largely men who control health and social services including services that concern women, for instance reproductive healthcare, as well as support for informal carers and the education system. This is typical of the glass ceiling where women are less likely to hold senior positions and when they do hold senior positions they have to work harder and for longer hours in jobs that are classed as mens work. In the 1970s 70 percent of managers were men and today 90 percent of judges are men. Anti discrimination legislation has sought to outlaw all forms of sex discrimination but this has mostly brought about advances for individual women but has not benefited all women although it has improved the practices of most employers as well as raising public awareness. While the education system no longer just prepares girls for domesticity, it is tending to equip them for sub- servient occupations especially in the public sector on the other hand it has also expanded womens options in the labour market. Despite the fact that women have been allowed to vote and participate in the democratic process on the same terms as men since 1928, in 2000 only 20 percent of Westminster Members of Parliament were women and in 2001 only 28 percent of local government councillors were women (EOC 2001). Although there has been a feminisation of the labour market, the increase in womens workforce participation can have disastrous effects on their health because of the double burden they have to shoulder, at home they take care of children and perform domestic tasks which are unpaid as well as doing their paid job. The General Household Survey of 1998 showed that the majority of carers were women who provided more than a hundred hours of care per week which was far more than any paid worker would do. It has been shown that caring is costly in various ways, for one there is loss of earnings and the rate of adults providing care who are in paid employment is low, the effect is even greater for women than men and greatest of all in the case of a mother providing care for a disabled child Arber and Ginn(1995): Baldwin (1985). In addition costs that are associated with disability like house adaptations to accommodate special equipment and higher transport costs. There is also the cost to the carer in terms of the stress and strain (Glendinning and Millar1992; Pahl 2006). Social policy is beginning to acknowledge the contribution of carers, one way was the introduction of the Carers Act 1985 which imposed an obligation on local authorities, however the support that carers receive is still limited. Financial support is also provided by the social security system with benefits like carers allowance and disabled persons tax credit for low paid disabled workers. There are also many ways in which care can be paid for Ungerson (2000); see also Ungerson (2006). The way social security is arranged and its effects on women can be attributed to the architects of the welfare system who were so used to patriarchal assumptions about respective roles of male breadwinners and female homemakers that the National Insurance system for example was founded on the idea that married women would mainly be financially dependent on their husbands and although obvious biased elements have since been removed, the inheritance of the assumptions on which the system was founded remains. Lewis and Piachaud (1992) demonstrated that women have always been poorer than men by showing the proportion of women amongst adults in receipt of poor relief or social assistance was at around 60 percent and was the same at the end of the 20th century. Women are the main recipients of most benefits and rely more on means tested benefits even though it means greater personal scrutiny, rather than contribution based benefits like jobseekers allowance, incapacity benefit and industrial injury benefit because these types of benefit rely on the recipient having been employed, and for women their work patterns are sometimes interrupted when they take time out to raise children and therefore their national insurance contributions are affected. Women are also in some cases hidden claimants because they receive benefits as dependents of male breadwinners, and for this reason, the welfare state may also function directly to make women dependent on men, although housing and social security provision has provided at least some measure of independence to women like those escaping from violent or dysfunctional relationships. Donzelot (1979) has observed that families seem to have extended functions and are subject by the welfare state to greater levels of surveillance and control for example womens performance as mothers and informal carers may be subject to supervision by healthcare and social service professionals. The family has not lost its functions, but it has lost control. It is still the major arena for the care of dependents, but traditional female tasks are now defined and managed outside the family and by men. Pascall (1997: 23). This is seen in the cases of lone parents 90 percent of whom are women who will have social assistance benefits withdrawn if they should cohabit and they can be compelled to cooperate with the making of child support assessments against the father(s) of their child(ren). In terms of work the, mother -as-work policy ignores that child care is also work and lone mothers stand little chance of becoming equal stakeholders because they must be both breadwinners and carers, and the position at present is that lone mothers are likely to be praised for the paid work they do and condemned as welfare dependent for the unpaid work they do and the eradication of the Lone Parent Premium to income support which directly disadvantaged many lone parents most of whom are women. In recent years studies have shown that pensioners are far more likely than the working population to experience ongoing poverty, between 1998 and 2001, 18 percent of pensioners experienced persistent poverty as compared to 7 percent of the working population. Studies have also found that in recent decades older women and those from ethnic minorities are more likely to experience poverty than other pensioners. Findings from these studies led Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to state in 2002: Our aim is to end pensioner poverty in our country. the introduction of a pension credit in October 2003 which guaranteed a minimum income of half of those people in this age group in the UK attempted to meet this goal but the success of this policy depends on all those entitled to claiming the benefit actually doing so Flaherty et al (2004). The majority of people over state pension age do retire from the labour market, but as longevity has increased the labour markets have tightened and retirement has become in Townsends words a kind of mass redundancy (1991:6). As a group, old peoples vulnerability to poverty is not as great as it was in the post second world war period, but this should not mask the fact that there is now greater inequality between older people than before. Since the number of old people both as a proportion of the total population and in absolute terms has grown this means that pensioner poverty is still a major issue. The employment of older people can be sensitive to changes in the labour market conditions and they may be shut out of jobs when the demand for labour falls. Age concern (see McEwan 1990), argue that older people are frequently subject to discrimination if they choose to re-enter the labour market often on mistaken assumptions about their reliability and adaptability. Additionally when older people do eventually become frail they suffer the same problems associated with disability. The lack of provision of universal pension in this country is out of sync with most industrialised countries, although the introduction of stakeholder pensions for people with no access to private pensions and the introduction of free eye tests has gone some way in helping pensioners at a disadvantage. Feminists tend to view welfare state provision as being important for improving womens lives but it also reinforces female dependency on men and the sexual division of labour. Some strands of feminism stress that women are closer to nature and are naturally more caring and less aggressive and they address the world in a different voice Gilligan (1982). Other strands of feminism discard this view and assert that the gendered nature of society is the exact product of power relations and patriarchy. It is a result of the dominance of men over women and can be rejected. So in conclusion, having assessed and considered all the evidence and studies on gender and poverty, it is clear that although successive governments have through legislation and policies attempted to lessen the poverty of women, the gap between the sexes still exists and women are still very disadvantaged and are poorer than men and a major reason is the structure of the welfare state which contributes to and reinforces the differences.

Aristotle’s Politics - The Good Man Should Not Rule the City Essay

Aristotle’s Politics - The Good Man Should Not Rule the City Aristotle contends that the good man is dissimilar to the good citizen in ways he goes a great length to illustrate. He distinguishes the two for the purpose of facilitating his later arguments concerning the appropriate allocation of sovereignty to the rightful ruler, who he subsequently claims is the good man who excels all others in each and every aspect. Aristotle's distinction further prompts the notion that he advocates a monarchial form of constitution, for the rule of a single good man is equivalent to a constitution of kingship. This can be derived through the following reasoning. Aristotle is convinced that the good citizen can so be defined only in relation to the constitution he is an element of: 'The excellence of the citizen must be an excellence relative to the constitution (1276b16).' The good man on the other hand, 'is a man so called in virtue of a single absolute excellence (1276b16).' He further asserts that the good citizen 'must possess the knowledge and capacit y requisite for ruling as well as for being ruledÃâ€"a good man will also need both (1277b7~1277b16).' From these conclusions of Aristotle, it is evident that the good man and the good citizen differ in the manner of their excellence, but not in their capacity for ruling or being ruled. It should therefore follow that there should not exist impediments to the ruling by the good citizen in the city as opposed to the ruling by the good man due to the fact that they are identical in their competence to rule. However, Aristotle in his later arguments, crowns the good man as ruler: 'in the best constitutionÃâ€"there is someone of outstanding excellence. What is to be done in that case? Nobody wou... ...scussed). The justification of the good man in becoming the supreme educator can be made in the following way. Since all absolutely excellent men (good men) arrive at their excellence through the process of education, that is, they are not innately excellent, their efforts should be directed toward the emulation of their excellence in the children of the city, for they are the ones who know best the process of becoming excellent. In this manner of education, the children (being future citizens) will grow up to become good men and good citizens, and thus the future city will comprise of many potential rulers. The good man through education, will contribute towards the ruling of the city indirectly in such an instance, and not directly as Aristotle claims he should do. Works Cited Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Gerald F. Else. Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1990.

Affirmative Action Will Build a Strong Nation Essay -- affirmative act

Affirmative Action Will Build a Strong Nation Affirmative Action: often upon hearing this word, one will start thinking about quotas and reverse discrimination. However, contrary to this misconception, affirmative action is actually a policy that dictates that employers attempt to find diverse employees by exploring untraditional sources of labor. The goal of affirmative action is to create a work force that mirrors the population of the nation both in gender and in ethnicity (Hanmer 8,10). Affirmative action is necessary to give all Americans an opportunity to be successful and to counteract the discrimination that still exists in modern society. Affirmative action is not only morally justifiable, but it is also socially and economically preferable in order to improve our society. The United States’ government first implemented affirmative action to overcome some of the clear differences in living conditions between people of different genders and races. Unfortunately, these differences still exist and eliminating affirm ative action now would be premature for our nation. Affirmative action is essential to compensate for the fact that women and minorities receive fewer opportunities to succeed. Even after laws were passed to end institutionalized racism, the white males who owned the businesses and held the best jobs before continued to own the businesses and hold the best jobs. While legal equality may have been achieved, the nation was nowhere near having true social equality. As President Lyndon B. Johnson stated when he first started affirmative action, â€Å"This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human abi... ...., William. â€Å"Give Affirmative Action Time to Act.† AAD Project. 1 Dec. 2000. University of California Santa Barbara, Department of English. 19 Feb. 2002 http://aad.english.ucsb.edu/docs/darity.html>. Hanmer, Trudy J. Affirmative Action: Opportunity for All?. Hillside, NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 1993. Mask, Susan. â€Å"Countering the Myths: A Proponent’s Point of View.† University of Iowa, Office of Affirmative Action. 25 Feb. 2002 http://www.uiowa.edu/~oaa/counteri.htm>. Plous, Scott. â€Å"Ten Myths About Affirmative Action.† Journal of Social Issues. 52.4 (1996): 25-31. Pressley, Sue Anne. â€Å"Texas Campus Attracts Fewer Minorities.† Washington Post. 28 Aug. 1997, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/affirm/stories/ aa082897.htm>. Supplier Diversity. Nike. 17 Mar. 2002. http://www.nikebiz.com/diversity/supplier.shtml>.

Motivation in the Play Essay

Villains and why they do their villainy is always justified or explained in any literary work. Even those childhood fairy tales with the villain’s formulaic and predictable evil deeds will always do things that have a purpose or will do those things because they were compelled to do it caused by a negative feeling: jealousy, revenge, envy, greed, a childhood without someone to love them or support them, etc. William Shakespeare’s plays are not an exemption to this case as he even creates characters that are capable of not only of evil; they embody evil in their totality as a person—if you may call them that. An example of this would be Iago, touted as the most villainous of all villains in the literary world because of the simple reason that he was guiltless, conscienceless and definitely purposeless in his strategic deeds that destroyed Othello and the people close to the tragic hero. This analysis will focus on this villain and scrutinize his character, villainy and most of all, his purpose (or the lack thereof) on why he did the things he has done that aimlessly ended to other people’s lives. In fact, there is already an answer to this query for Iago is just plain evil, nothing less and definitely more. His motivation lies in the fact that he wants to end other people’s happiness and takes simple delight in causing other people pain and grief which makes him not just a villain but a very mysterious and most terrifying one. In Othello, the Moor of Venice, a man’s capacity to do evil is magnified as Iago is overcome with rage as Othello gives a position to another less qualified man that was originally intended for Iago. Iago takes this in deep and plots against Othello, a Moor in Venice that holds such high position, influential power and great riches. Iago uses jealousy to destroy Othello and the people around him by making it appear that Othello’s loyal wife, Desdemona, is having an affair with another man. In rage, Othello kills his own wife and when he realizes that it was all Iago’s evil plan, he kills himself out of grief and guilt. Iago confesses to no one and does not explain his actions; instead, he keeps mum about what he has done and the purpose in them. Thus, as the play concludes, it is only the audience who are witnesses to Iago’s malice and the extent of his wickedness—but there is a possibility that Iago also leads the audience into believing that they know the entire truth when in fact, he has been dishonest the whole time to everyone—even that of the audience. Iago acts as the villain in the play even if he was not really the one who did the bad deeds. He is the sole villain because he was the master plotter in the whole thing that even innocent people like Roderigo and Emilia were implicated as bad people when they were not wholly that capable of evil. Roderigo and Emilia were simply pawns to his plans and he used them and easily discarded them. In the book of Dobbs & Wells entitled The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, they sum up the villainy of Iago (and pretty much, the entire play) in a few words: He skilfully convinces Othello that his wife Desdemona has been adulterous with Cassio. He wounds Cassio, murders Roderigo, whom he has involved in his plots, and also kills his own wife Emilia. (211) The extent of Iago’s villainy does not merely end in his acts and plans but in an entirely different context and case because his villainy was unjustified and unexplainable. He did not have a purpose and an aim in ruining Othello’s life and soul. For even if it seems that Iago was motivated by the anger he felt over Othello’s passing over the position that was rightfully his to another man that was very much unqualified (according to Iago that is), it still seems not enough motive. In the first part of the play (act I, scene i), Iago insists that he does hate Othello and does a lengthy monologue on why he hates the Moor. However, it can be later learned that maybe Iago was not really motivated by that trivial act done by Othello since Iago has never really revealed the real reason on why he hates Othello. This is because in the same act, he declares that he will never say what he feels and thinks because it is dangerous and it is laughable: For when my outward action doth demonstrate / The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, ’tis not long after / But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at. I am not what I am. (Shakespeare 1. 1. 63-7) His supposed reason on hating Othello may not be his true reason for the vendetta he so chillingly instills on the Moor because Iago will never disclose his real reasons. Thus, even though Iago was transparent with his feelings and thoughts to the audience and some characters like Roderigo and Emilia, he actually lied to everyone since he could never â€Å"wear his heart† on his sleeve. Moreover, even if the rage he felt over Othello’s actions propelled him to do/plan such things, it was not enough to completely destroy the life of one man and the lives around that man. To think that Iago even killed his own wife with his own hands—without a second thought on doing it or a guilt overcoming afterwards. As what Dobbs & Wells wrote, Iago was a â€Å"motiveless evil† and that lack of motivation in him makes him a superior proponent of evil (211). In conclusion, Iago is most villainous not just because of the things he has done but also because of the lack of motivation in them, the absence of purpose, the incapacity to be guilty over the success of his evil plans and most of all, the mockery he throws to the characters and the audience at the end of the play with his silence. This silence is eerie as it has a purpose—to make everyone shiver at what other havoc and damnation he could have done with that evil mind of his. Works Cited Dobson, Michael and Wells, Stanley. â€Å"Iago†. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. , 2001. 211. Shakespeare, William. â€Å"Othello, the Moor of Venice†. Ed. Russ McDonald. New York: Penguin Group, 2001. Print.