"There is an enormous amount of work around," says Elaine Aarons, head of Eversheds' London-based employment team. Last week Aarons worked into the early hours every night and this week is likely to be no different. If it is any comfort to Aarons, she is not alone.

The work is being generated by the increasingly sophisticated way in which issues regarding employment law are influencing the outcome of corporate deals.

Employment lawyers are now not just small pieces of the larger corporate-driven jigsaw, but are acting as project managers in their own right. A rapidly-changing rule book and ever developing case law only add to the pressure to provide up-to-date advice.

A raft of European-inspired legislation has either hit the books or is in the process of going through Parliament.
The latest is the Employment Relations Bill, which went public on 27 January and which is sponsored by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Stephen Byers.

The consultation process started when the Fairness at Work White Paper was released last year, but professional bodies like the Employment Lawyers Association and the City of London Solicitors Company employment law sub-committee still plan to make their views on the Bill known.

At the heart of the Bill are proposals to improve the rights of employees. These include plans to lower the qualification period for unfair dismissal from two years to one and to raise the limit on employees' compensation for such dismissal from £12,000 to £50,000.

The Bill also details exhaustive provisions on trade union recognition and the extension of maternal and parental leave obligations.

As the Bill passes through Parliament, the extent of the proposals and their anticipated impact on clients will become clearer. So for the time being, practices are being kept busy advising on existing rules.

The firms that boast some of the larger companies and institutions as their clients are particularly busy organising and smoothing through employment issues raised by mergers and acquisitions.

Behind reports of redundancies at newly-merged BPAmoco and speculation that the same will happen at the London operations of merging French banks Societe Generale and Paribas are fundamental employment law issues.

As things stand, if companies transfer assets rather than shares during a merger or takeover, elected employee representatives must be informed and consulted over any planned changes to the terms of employment of the workforce.

A £25m case brought by the Manufacturing Science Finance union against Royal & Sun Alliance on 4 February came as a direct result of these rules. In this case, the employees allege that the company failed to inform and consult them before the news broke on Radio Four's Today programme.

Baker & McKenzie's head of employment Fraser Younson says: "Clients must start consulting employees in good time. They must not start issuing notices of termination before the end of the consultation period [90 days for more than 100 employees]."

Eversheds is acting on the merger of PolyGram Seagram in the UK and 42 other jurisdictions, and Deutsche Bank has instructed Simmons & Simmons to handle the UK employment issues of its merger with Bankers Trust.

Currently, one of the most contentious issues is the reluctance of senior management to inform employee representatives of price sensitive information relating to their strategy. In the past, UK companies have kept plans within a core group of senior advisers while they are worked out.

But the obligation to consult employees impacts on the time-tabling of any deal and William Dawson, head of employment at Simmons & Simmons, says the sooner executives begin the process the better. Younson agrees.

"Employers now have to factor in and trust employees to maintain confidentiality," he says.
Experience in continental Europe on this point is positive. Work councils have been a common feature for some time and there have been few problems of confidentiality.

Younson says the threat of job losses and even a criminal record in some jurisdictions is enough to encourage most employee representatives to keep market sensitive information secret.

"UK management are not used to consulting employees," Younson says. "But you will see the start of a sea change in the next few years as they are forced to change to deal with it."