HR Articles

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in Peninsula Business Services Ltd v Donaldson (9 March 2016) has held that suspending childcare vouchers during maternity leave was not discriminatory when carried out via a salary sacrifice scheme.

Over the last year the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) received over 100 complaints in respect of job and services advertisements appearing to discriminate against persons with ‘protected characteristics’ including on their age, race, sexual orientation, disability and sex.

The government have today published the draft Gender Pay Gap Regulations and further consultation. Below is an initial Q and A.

Starbucks have made the headlines having been found to have unlawfully discriminated and victimised an employee with dyslexia in a judgment issued by the Employment Tribunal this week.

Disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on someone’s “ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities” (Section 6(1), Equality Act 2010).

The EAT has overruled a tribunal’s decision, holding the fact that employees over 50 were entitled to early retirement benefits under the pension scheme (making their severance costs much higher than for employees aged under 50) was not a "relevant circumstance".

In Kelly v Covance Laboratories Ltd the Employment Appeals Tribunal held that an employer's instruction to an employee not to speak Russian (her native language) at work was not direct race discrimination or race harassment.

What better way to start enjoying the festive period than considering whether Mrs Claus has a valid equal pay claim! Unfortunately this is not fictitious, one lucky tribunal judge will be faced with this question at some point next year.

ACAS has released updated guidance on managing disability in the workplace. ACAS say that last year they had nearly 12,000 calls to the their helpline related to disability issues and received almost 3,000 disability discrimination employment tribunal cases.

David Cameron has announced this week that Gender Pay Gap reporting will be extended to include the public sector and bonuses.