And on the Seventh Day he rested....

In Estorinho v Jokic a cafe knowingly hired a catholic chef who did not want to work on Sunday because of the Old Testament prohibition on working on the sabbath. After several years of this arrangement the cafe decided they wanted him to work on Sunday. The chef raised a grievance based on religious discrimination and in retaliation the cafe sacked him. The tribunal found that the dismissal was because the chef complained he was being discriminated against on grounds of religion and was unfair. The report doesn't indicate the compensation sum.

There was no doubt in this case that the religious beliefs were genuine. Future cases may though turn on whether an employee genuinely has a religious objection to sabbath working.

Veil of Tears....

In the political satire "Bulworth" the press are shown asking inanely "Is there a controversy here": the last week has felt much the same with the coverage (which is indeed the appropriate word) of the veil row. In this climate it's no suprise that employment law has been roped in. The Guardian reports the suspension of a teaching assitant for refusal to remove her veil when teaching. The report says the matter is going to a Tribunal already. I assume that the teacher is challenging the suspension as being in breach of the 2003 rules on religious discrimination and possibly under the sex discrimination act. If the claim is one of direct discrimination the school will have to show that it would suspend a non-moslem for wearing attire that covered the face. That should be an easy task as its hard to believe a school would tolerate a teacher wearing a full balaclava in the class room. The trickier task is to defend a claim of indirect discrimination. A rule that a teacher's face must be visible to the pupils is on the face of it neutral but in reality is aimed at preventing the use of the full veil. To defend the claim the school will need to show that the requirement is a proportionate method of achieving a legitimate aim. Expect to hear a lot from anthropoligists and educational psychologists as this moves through the system. As a School Governor myself I know where my sympathies lie.

POSITIVE RACE DISCRIMINATION IS ILLEGAL

This headline should be branded on to the HR department of Gloucestershire police. The case of Matt Powell v Chief Constable for Gloucestershire establishes no new principle. It stated a law that has been in place for 30 years. The police wanted to increase it's number of ethnic minority employees and at the next recruitment drive allowed all ethnic minority applications through to shortlisting but weeded out 2/3 of the white applications by random selection. This was so obviously racial discrimination its hard to believe - the Bristol Tribunal awarded £2500 as compensation for injury to feelings.

Sex pest payout

In Siddika v Guardian Care Home the Birmingham Tribunal awarded £7000 against the company whose boss allegedly sent her text messages that were overly familiar; asked for sex; made dirty phone calls. The sum of £7000 includes loss of earnings and injury to feelings and seems low. The Tribunal may have been awarding less because they didn't believe everything the claimant told them.

Boss too drunk to be punished

The current law is that if an employer fails to follow basic dismissal procedure any award for compensation is increased by at least 10% and can be increased by 50%. A tribunal can in exceptional cases refuse to increase the award. The Glasgow Employment Tribunal has given such an example in Foley v Galbraith. The employee was a Personal Assistant sacked without any warning or meetings. His boss employed him personally to do his washing, ironing, shopping and to pay his bills. . However his boss couldn't recall anything about the allegations of theft that he said caused dismissal as he was an alcoholic with severe physical disability. For this reason the Tribunal felt it unfair to punish the employer further. The P.A. got loss of earnings for 13 months in a total award of just under £14,000.

How not to deal with depression

In Adamczyk v East Sussex County Council the claimant was off ill for depression from Summer 03 to Spring 04. When she tried to come back in a phased return to work she was told that her post was no longer necessary. It does sometimes happen that employers only realise that they are overstaffed when someone is off sick or on maternity leave. In this case the Tribunal decided that the real reason was that they didn't want the aggro of dealing with a depressive employee. The give away was the fact that the School were advertising to recruit for almost the same post as the Claimant. This is a big warning against using the dodge of a "redundancy" to get round the Disability Discrimination Act.

£60,000 for unfairly dismissed 57 year old

The Industrial Tribunal in Belfast has awarded the maximum compensation for a 57 year old IT manager sacked to make way for another colleague. McDonald v Auto Indemnity (UK) Ltd is a useful reminder that Tribunals take it as read that older employees find it harder to find alternative work and that loss of earnings awards can be made for several years pay.

Sacked for eating 6 grapes

The Daily Mirror reports the astonishing dismissal by Waitrose of a man with learning disability for eating six grapes left loose by a customer in a trolley. This isn't a Tribunal case yet but seems to me to be a clear cut case of management following procedure without engaging their brains.

Holiday invite costs boss £33,000

The Exeter Tribunal has awarded £33,697 in Bing v Chard Town Council and Prior against the Council's ex Lord Mayor for sexual harassment. The Council had settled Ms Bing's claim against them for £25,000. A reminder that employees can sue both the harasser and the employer. The award reflected the rather the harasser's attempts to develop a relationship with an employee by inviting her to lunch, then to Andorra for a holiday. Ms Bing went off sick in response and raised a grievance which led to the Mayor being de-chained by the Council. The now ex- Mayor made things much worse by issuing a press release giving details of the allegations and her home phone number, and implied she was not really sick.

"I'm fed up with you - you're fired"

In Smith v MacDonald Transport the Tribunal awarded £8500 to an employee who was sacked on the spot for basically standing up for himself. The interesting thing to note is that his actual lost wages were about £2000. The final award was £8500 because there was a 50% uplift for failure to call a formal dismissal hearing; 4 weeks pay (capped at £290 a week) because he hadn't been given a proper written statement of employment terms; 2 weeks pay because he hadn't been given a reason for his dismissal and 10.5 weeks pay because he was 60 and had served 7 years with the company.