Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 explained

Short Title:	Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004
Type:	Statutory Instrument
Parliament:	Parliament of the United Kingdom
Year:	2004
Citation:	SI 2004/3426
Use New Uk-Leg:	yes

The Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 (SI 3426/2004) are a United Kingdom statutory instrument. This follows the EU Information and Consultation of Employees Directive 2002/14/EC establishing a general framework for informing and consulting employees.

Contents

The ICE Regulations require that employees are informed and consulted on all contract or workplace organisation changes.^[1] Consultation means an "obligation to negotiate" with "a view to reaching agreement".^[2] The penalty on an employer for failure to consult or follow the Regulations is up to £75,000 for each violation.^[3]

Negotiation and consultation may take place under a voluntary agreement with an employer, particularly through a trade union under a collective agreement. If there is no voluntary agreement, formal consultation procedure may be triggered by at least 2% of employees,^[4] and then requires election of a body of all staff. This procedure must "enable the information and consultation representatives to meet the employer at the relevant level of management depending on the subject under discussion".^[5]

See also

• UK labour law
• European labour law

References

• PL Davies and C Kilpatrick, 'UK Worker Representation after Single Channel' (2004) 33 Industrial Law Journal 121
• KD Ewing and GM Truter, 'The Information and Consultation of Employees' Regulations: Voluntarism's Bitter Legacy' (2005) 68 Modern Law Review 626

Notes and References

1. ICER 2004 reg 20
2. Junk v Kühnel (2005) C-188/03, [43] and ICER 2004 reg 20(4)(d)
3. ICER 2004 regs 22 – 23, e.g. Amicus v Macmillan Publishers Ltd [2007] IRLR 378 Elias J imposed a £55,000 penalty on an employer who failed to set up an election for employee representatives.
4. ICER 2004 reg 7(2) as amended by the Employment Rights (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2019/731 Pt 4 reg.16(3) reducing the threshold from 10%
5. ICER 2004 reg 20(4)(c)