Equality, diversity and human rights

New and updated

• Date:

  17 October 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Félix Palacios de la Villa v Cortefiel Servicios SA

  In Félix Palacios de la Villa v Cortefiel Servicios SA Case C-411/05, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has given its judgment that the Equal Treatment Directive (2000/78/EC) does not preclude a Spanish law permitting clauses in collective agreements that allow employees to be compulsorily retired when they reach a specified age.

• Date:

  2 October 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Equal pay: Meaning of 'same employment'

  In South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council v Anderson and others [2007] IRLR 715, the Court of Appeal has held that employees and their comparators who worked at different establishments, but whose contractual terms and conditions were derived from the same collective agreement, were in the same employment within the meaning of s.1(6) of the Equal Pay Act 1970.

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Case round-up

  Judith Harris, professional support lawyer at Addleshaw Goddard, outlines the latest legal rulings.

• Date:

  23 August 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Romec Ltd v Rudham

  In Romec Ltd v Rudham EAT/0069/07, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has held that an employment tribunal erred in its approach to deciding whether or not an employer's failure to extend a disabled employee's phased return to work was a breach of the duty to make reasonable adjustments.

• Date:

  18 July 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Maternity leave: Right to return to work

  In Blundell v The Governing Body of St Andrew's Catholic Primary School and another EAT/0329/06 the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that a teacher returning to work following maternity leave was not entitled to return to the same class that she had been teaching when her maternity leave began.

• Date:

  11 July 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Disability discrimination: No obligation to continue to pay full sick pay to disabled employee

  In O'Hanlon v Commissioners for Inland Revenue & Customs [2007] IRLR 404 CA, the Court of Appeal held that the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 does not require an employer to continue paying a disabled employee whose entitlement to sick pay has been exhausted by disability-related absence.

• Date:

  11 July 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Victimisation: Employer went beyond what was reasonable

  In St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council v Derbyshire and others [2007] IRLR 504 HL, the House of Lords held that an employer that wrote to a number of equal pay litigants and their colleagues warning of potential job losses if they continued with their claims victimised them contrary to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.

• Date:

  1 July 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Burden of proof in disability discrimination cases

  The EAT provides guidance on shifting the burden of proof in disability discrimination claims, in Project Management Institute v Latif (10 May 2007).

• Date:

  27 June 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Equal pay: Job evaluation scheme did not have retrospective effect

  In 1) Bainbridge & Ors 2) Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council v 1) Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council 2) Williams EAT/0424/06 & EAT/0031/07 the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that successful equal pay claims confer the right to up to six years' back pay prior to the institution of proceedings.

• Date:

  30 May 2007

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Human rights: Union did not act unlawfully in expelling BNP member

  In Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) v United Kingdom [2007] IRLR 361, a case of competing rights of association under art. 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, a trade union's right to expel a member of the BNP because his values conflicted fundamentally with its own outweighed the individual's right to membership of the union.