In Pendleton v Pennine Housing 2000 the Leeds Tribunal has held that the dismissal of a caretaking coordinator for secretly recording conversations with his co-workers was fair. When the co-workers discovered the recordings they made it clear they would not work with him again. This was sufficient to bring the dismissal within the band of reasonable responses a reasonable employer could take and thus the dismissal was fair. His defence was that he had a poor memory and illegible handwriting. Which begged the question - why didn't he tell people he was recording the meetings?
£17,560 for pregnancy dismissal/harssment
In Emma Nicholson v Network Global Solutions a boss hired a former Miss Great Britain finalist because her looks would make her a good salesperson. She was bullied into posing topless during a sales training day - with the photograph later pinned up on a noticeboard. She told them she was pregnant and had her company car removed and her work possessions dumped in her front garden. She was later sacked. After the first hearing last March her boss bought a racehorse and named it Emma Told Lies. This did not impress the Tribunal. The company were lucky to get away with an award of £17,560. The final line of the Sunday Mirror report may suggest why....
Veil of Tears continued....
The teaching assistant suspended for refusing to remove the full veil whilst teaching in class is now reported as saying that she was prepared to remove her veil in class provided that there the were no men in her class. For an employer to respect this wish would open them to a claim of unlawful sex discrimination by male teachers prevented from doing their job. No employer can tolerate being put into this position.
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.
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