Equality, diversity and human rights
In Davies v Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) uses EC equal pay law to rule that an employer has to pay a trade union health and safety representative for all five days of a training course, even though it employs her on a part-time basis.
An employee diagnosed as suffering from reactive depression was a "disabled person" within the meaning of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, holds the EAT in Kapadia v London Borough of Lambeth.
Calculating severance payments by reference to length of service and final pay, so that a part-time employee who had previously worked full time did not have her full-time service reflected in her severance payment, was not discriminatory, holds the House of Lords in Barry v Midland Bank plc.
Employment tribunals have jurisdiction to award compensation for the statutory tort of unlawful racial discrimination under the Race Relations Act, including damages for physical or psychiatric injury caused by the tort, holds the Court of Appeal in Sheriff v Klyne Tugs (Lowestoft) Ltd.
In Stubbs v (1) Chief Constable of Lincolnshire Police and (2) Walker a Nottingham employment tribunal (Chair: D R Sneath) reconvenes to award compensation of £182,000, including £41,500 for injury to feelings and injury to health to a former detective retired from the police force on ill-health grounds following its ruling that she had been subject to a lengthy period of sexual harassment and discrimination by her line manager.
It was a sufficient basis for a claim of victimisation for an unsuccessful job applicant to show that those who had interviewed him were subconsciously influenced by their knowledge of the fact that he had previously done a protected act, holds the House of Lords in Nagarajan v London Regional Transport.
A pregnant employee of a ferry company, who was suspended from working on board ship in accordance with Regulations precluding those with specified medical conditions, including pregnancy, from working at sea, suffered direct sex discrimination when she did not receive full pay during the period of her suspension, holds the EAT in P&O European Ferries (Dover) Ltd and another v Iverson.
In McGuigan v TG Baynes & Sons, the EAT holds that an employee suffered unlawful direct sex discrimination when her employer failed to consult her over her impending redundancy on the ground, among others, that she was absent on maternity leave - a pregnancy-related reason.
In Day v T Pickles Farms Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) says that an employer should not wait for written notification of an employee's pregnancy before carrying out a risk assessment, and that its failure to carry out an assessment may have caused the employee detriment within the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
In Abbey National plc v Formoso, the EAT rejects an employment tribunal's "reasonable employer" approach to calculating the financial loss flowing from a discriminatory dismissal.
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