Main sources of legal rights

Here are the main sources of legal rights in relation to workplace stress:

• health and safety law;

• the employment contract, especially the contractual right to work in a safe environment and the implied duty of mutual trust and confidence;

• the law of negligence (the employer’s duty to take reasonable steps to protect workers from foreseeable psychiatric injury caused by work);

• unfair dismissal laws; and

• equality law, especially protection from disability discrimination.