HR Articles

Following a campaign by the Liberal Democrats, suggesting that employers with over 250 employees be obliged to share their parental leave policies, ten major employers (including Deloitte and RBS) have agreed to publish their parental leave and pay policies. The research cited to support this campaign included a survey by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, which concluded that as many as 54,000 women a year lose their jobs due to either pregnancy or maternity discrimination.

In a judgment published this week in the case of Mutombo-Mpania v Angard Staffing Solutions, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) upheld a decision that - an employee who suffered from essential hypertension but had advised his employer that he had no disability was not, on the evidence he provided, a disabled person; and the employer could not reasonably have been expected to know that he was disabled.

It appears that Morrisons is the latest of the ‘Big Four’ supermarkets (so called due to their dominance of the market share) to face a string of Equal Pay claims. Whilst Tesco still holds the lion’s share, controlling 27.4% of the available market, Morrisons’ not so insignificant 10.2% keeps it firmly rooted as one of the most influential chains in the UK. The claimants’ representatives are well versed in this matter as they are already overseeing legal action on behalf of 30,000 employees at ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

Following a consultation progress, the government has decided that specific legal protection against caste-based discrimination is not required. It says that it has not been able to identify a legally workable definition of caste and that it would be difficult to differentiate between caste and social class.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has recently found that a belief held by only one person, cannot give rise to an indirect discrimination claim on the ground of philosophical belief. The claimant worked for Mulberry as a Market Support Assistant: a role which gave her access to some of Mulberry’s designs ahead of their launch to market.

In Ali v Torrosian and others (t/a Bedford Hill Family Practice) the EAT confirmed that when determining a claim for unfavourable treatment arising in consequence of a disability, Tribunals must consider whether the employer’s pursued legitimate aim could be achieved by less discriminatory means. Discrimination arising from disability (“unfavourable treatment”) was a new ground of claim created under the Equality Act 2010.

In the case of City of York Council v Grosset, the Court of Appeal (COA) upheld a decision that an employer was liable for discrimination arising from a disability when it dismissed an employee due to misconduct, even though the employer was not aware that the employee’s conduct was due to his disability. The claimant was Head of English at a school and suffered with cystic fibrosis.

In Bakkali v GMB (South) Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided that asking a Moroccan Muslim bus driver whether he "still supported Islamic State" was neither direct discrimination nor harassment related to race or religion.

The EAT have held that an employer’s failure to pay enhanced shared parental leave (SPL) to a male employee when it did pay enhanced maternity leave to female employees was not direct sex discrimination (our blog on the Tribunal’s earlier decision can be found here).

After much press coverage in the build up to the reporting deadline of 4 April 2018, organisations employing more than 250 employees have now published their gender pay gap data and the results are now available for all to see. While the BBC reported that around 1,500 organisations missed the deadline to report, the results that are in make for tough reading.