Working Time and Holidays: a practical legal guide by Lucy McLynn

BOOK REVIEW


WORKING TIME AND HOLIDAYS: A PRACTICAL LEGAL GUIDE

By Lucy McLynn

ISBN: 978-0-19-955169-9

Oxford University Press

www.oup.co.uk




NO VACATION HERE WITH THIS EXCELLENT PRACTICAL APPROACH TO WORKING TIME

An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers

If you are an employer or practitioner advising on employment law, you would do well to acquire this book, which offers clear, carefully structured and accessible guidance on what has become a difficult and often technical area of the law: the issues relating to working time and holidays for employed workers.

Fundamentally the book guides you through the complexities of the dreaded Working Time Directive (WTD) adopted by the EU member states in 1993 and subsequently the Working Time Regulations (WTR) which were speedily drafted in the UK in 1997, reaching the statute books on 1 October 1998.

As the author Lucy McLynn states in the preface, the WTR have been amended numerous times by secondary legislation in the now 11 years since their enactment, having been dogged by a not inconsiderable amount of querying and controversy. Although the legislation is complex, employers who fall foul of it can be severely penalized, which means that if youre an employer, the acquisition of McLynns practical guide will rank as a necessity rather than just an optional purchase.

As the author reminds us, for example, the one WTR right with a specific calculable financial value is holiday pay, which is therefore the area which has proved to be the most litigated. This and related issues, (some of them still unresolved) are discussed in chapter 5 of the Guide and the reader is also pointed in the direction of further sources of information.

Written in plain language and logically structured, the book more than lives up to its title as a practical guide, incorporating a number of useful features, including the Frequently Asked Questions and Checklist at the end of each chapter and a detailed index.

There are tables of cases, statutes and statutory instruments and three appendices covering precedents, record-keeping checklist and the Working Time Regulations 1998, which govern the entitlements of all workers in England and Wales to annual leave, maximum working hours, rest breaks and daily and weekly rest.

Here in one handy volume are practical solutions to common problems faced by employers and it is a delight to read this sound work from OUP. Although McLynns approach is in the direction of the employer, the book is equally useful as a source of information and guidance for individual employees and those who advise them with the confusions created by the Directive and the law is stated as at September 2009, so you wont be taking a vacation when you use this Guide.

ISBN: 978-0-19-955169-9

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• Richmond Green Chambers
• Oxford University Press