In 2021, Dutch courts held that both Deliveroo riders and Uber drivers are employees. Interestingly, the District Court of Amsterdam considered there to be a ‘modern relationship of authority’ between Uber drivers and Uber.

The Italian Supreme Court has held a collective redundancy to be unfair because the first information notice to the unions was incomplete and did not mention the reasons why the employees to be dismissed could not be assigned to another site of the company.

An employer has been held liable for not preventing and tackling an employee’s sexual harassment of another employee contrary to the employer’s obligations under the Danish Equal Treatment Act. Furthermore, the employer had breached the Equal Treatment Act by dismissing the employee when she informed the employer of the sexual harassment.

Flight and cabin crew not covered by E101 certificates who work for 45 minutes per day in an airline’s premises intended to be used by staff located at Bergamo airport and who are on board that airline’s aircraft the rest of the time, are subject to Italian social security legislation.

A Spanish anti cumulation provision for occupational invalidity pensions from the same scheme favours male workers without any objective justification and hence constitutes gender discrimination.

It is not allowed to not take account of services provided as an interim civil servant (hence on a fixed-term basis) when consolidating the status of a career civil servant.

A Member State can impose rules for the dismissal of data protection officers which are stricter than those of the GDPR, but they may not undermine the GDPR’s objectives.

The Ploiești Court of Appeal has ruled that although the applicable national legislation in case of transfers of undertakings requires a transfer of ownership, the ECJ case law prevails and that, in the absence of a contractual agreement, a transfer of undertaking can be established even if the transferee concludes new employment contracts with the employees.

The definition of online dispute resolution (ODR) has become increasingly contested, particularly fueled by the recent explosion in the use of technology during the pandemic by courts and alternative dispute resolution practitioners. The recent expansion of stakeholders has contributed productively to the on-going discussion of the parameters of ODR that have implications for ethical practice. Does the use of video conferencing constitute ODR? What new procedural and substantive justice concerns arise with the use of technology in dispute handling and how should they be addressed? Since technology not only alters the role of third parties and disputants but also serves as a fourth party, what are the ethical implications for example, of employing artificial intelligence? How can explorations of the boundaries of ODR foster a re-imaging of 21st Century justice systems?
This article explores the importance of the parameters of ODR for the ethical practice of dispute resolution and introduces a paper, Framing the Parameters of Online Dispute Resolution (National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution, 2022) that offers a descriptive ODR Framework; one that encompasses the broad range of views on the boundaries of ODR along an axis of increasing reliance on technology through various functions and stages of dispute handling. The article discusses the implications of this ODR Framework for enhancing ethical guidance and regulation for whatever definition of ODR is utilized.

In this article, we investigate whether the conditions for the emergence of an online dispute resolution (ODR) market in Portuguese-speaking countries have been met. The size of the Portuguese-speaking population and the internet penetration in Portuguese-speaking countries may look promising, but what is called networked readiness as well as the legal context needs to be factored in before any conclusion may be drawn.

Starting from the premise that the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus forced the growth of dispute resolution technologies in Brazil and around the world, this article presents a critique of one of the central arguments for the deployment of online dispute resolution techniques in the courts: that courts are a mere service. It proposes, therefore, the thesis that the term courts, as a synonym of the jurisdictional function, can be understood neither as a public service nor as a mere place but rather as a condition of possibility for fundamental rights, be it in physical or digital environments. In order to guarantee that the execution of procedural acts in digital environments conforms to the democratic constitutional procedure, this article proposes to create a seal of recognition to be granted by the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) to the platforms that operate according to the due constitutional process. It is also suggested that minimal guidelines be formulated that are capable of offering a reference for the discussions, development, use and integration of online conflict resolution platforms, as well as that institutional protocols be adopted as a means of democratizing the application of technology in law.

Various of our academic board analysed employment law cases from last year.