HR Articles

A few months on from the landmark Supreme Court decision in the Asda equal pay claim, workers at Tesco have received a favorable judgment from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in their own equal pay case.  

Workers philosophical beliefs are protected but can amount to discrimination or harassment in the workplace for asserting beliefs that are considered offensive.

The case of Allay (UK) Ltd v Gehlen, is a stark warning to employers not to rely on ‘stale’ or ‘ineffective’ equal opportunities and anti-harassment training as a defence to claims of unlawful discrimination. 

Since 2017, employers with 250 or more employees have had a duty to publish their gender pay gap data. The gender pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of men and women across an organisation. The reporting duty was suspended in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A new mother who was not invited to her work Christmas party whilst on maternity leave has succeeded in her claim against her employer.

The Employment Tribunal has issued a timely reminder to employers of the dangers of social media in the workplace, after finding in Abdi v Deltec International Courier Ltd that the employee had been harassed by her colleagues via WhatsApp.

The Fawcett Society have marked Equal Pay Day – the day of the year on which women stop earning relative to men – by releasing a report warning the UK is at a crossroads on equal pay.

2020 is likely to be a year of financial constraints for many businesses. Therefore, the recent Court of Appeal decision in Heskett v Secretary of State for Justice [2020] could be good news for employers seeking to justify indirect discrimination as a biproduct of a short-term need to reduce expenditure.

If it becomes law the new bill would require more employers to comply with gender pay gap reporting and report on ethnicity pay gaps for the first time. It could also give female and BME employees the right to know what their male or non BME colleagues are paid.  

The employment tribunal also ordered Oxford to reinstate the professor after he won his claims for age discrimination and unfair dismissal.