Law reports
The PCS Information Service holds a large number of employment law reports going right back to 1972.
If you want any more information email the information services: info@pcs.org.uk
Latest employment law reports
Bird v Sylvester and anor, Court of Appeal
Solicitor did not aid act of Discrimination.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A solicitor's role in advising an employer to take allegedly discriminatory disciplinary proceedings against an employee did not give rise to liability for aiding a discriminatory act under the Race Relations Acts 1976. While it could not be said that a solicitor's action under instruction could never amount to an act of discrimination, on the facts of this case the solicitor was merely acting as a conduit for the employer's actions and so did not aid any unlawful conduct.
Document number: 07 12 101
Ralph Martindale & Co Ltd V Harris; and Hutchins V Permacell Finesse Ltd.
Redundancy and protective awards
Journal: Personnel Today (from Xperthr)
Document number: 07 12 49 E
Del Cerro Alonso v Osakidetza-Servicio Vasco de Salud, ECJ
ECJ Rules on Scope of Directive and Justification.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: Less favourable treatment cannot be justified solely on the basis that it is provided for by statutory or secondary legislation, holds the ECJ. Thus, a statute and collective agreement excluding temporary staff working in the Spanish Health Sector from length of service allowances paid to comparable permanent workers could not be relied upon as objective justification for the difference in treatment for the purposes of the Fixed-term Work Directive. The ECJ also confirms that the Directive applies to public sector workers and to complaints about less favourable treatment in relation to pay.
Document number: 07 12 102
Grundy v British Airways plc, Court of Appeal
Tribunal did not Err in Assessing Disparate Impact
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A tribunal did not err in finding that an employer's historical pay arrangements, which led to a female employee being paid less the a male colleague employed on like work, had an adverse disparate impact on women, and thus fell to be justified by the employer. In assessing disparate impact, the tribunal was entitled to focus its attention on the group of employees who were disadvantaged by the arrangements in question; there is no legal principle that tribunals must always focus on the advantaged group.
Document number: 07 12 105
Hammond v International Network Services UK Ltd (in Voluntary Liquidation),
High Court (QBD)
No Harassment Under PHA.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employee's allegations of 'harassment' in breach of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 were rejected. Even if the alleged incidents had taken place, they were not serious enough to satisfy the Act's definition of harassment, which requires oppressive and unreasonable conduct to be established.
Document number: 07 12 109
Hart & others V The Secretary of State for Education and Skills (DfES)
Additional Information: Case brought by four educational advisers working for the DfES on fixed-term contracts - in relation to exclusion from the enhanced redundancy scheme enjoyed by permanent employees.
Document number: 07 12 30
HM Revenue and customs (HMRC) V Stringer and other
Long term sick leave; annual leave; and holiday pay.
Journal: Xperthr
Additional Information: The Advocate-General has said that workers who are on long-term sick leave should continue to accrue statutory annual leave, but they should not be able to take this paid leave during the period of the sick leave.
Document number: 07 12 48 E
Lyddon v Englefield Brickwork Ltd, EAT
Employer Given Credit for 'Rolled-up' Holiday Pay
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: Payments forming part of a worker's 'rolled-up' pay packet that were made, transparently, in respect of annual leave could be set off against the worker's entitlement to holiday pay under the Working Time Regulations 1998, even though there was no written provision in his contract
specifying the exact amount of pay attributable to that entitlement.
Document number: 07 12 104
Mobility clauses: Ruling backs forced relocation of workers
Journal: Labour Research
Additional Information: Last month the Court of Appeal held that employers can bypass redundancy consultation by transferring staff to other locations under the terms of a mobility clause.
Document number: 07 12 31
New ISG Ltd v Vernon and ors, High Court (ChD)
Employee Could Object to TUPE Transfer After the Event
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employee was entitled, two days after a TUPE transfer, to object to the transfer of his employment to the transferee. Where the employee did not know the transferee's identity until the transfer had taken place, the TUPE regulations would be read purposively, giving effect to the employee's fundamental right to choose his employer. It followed that the employee's contract had not transferred under TUPE to the transferee's employ, meaning that the transferee could not enforce the restrictive covenants contained within it.
Document number: 07 12 108
The New Testament Church of God v Stewart, Court of Appeal
Minister Can Claim Unfair Dismissal
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employment tribunal chairman had been entitled to find, on the facts, that a minister and his church had intended to enter into a legal relationship and that the contract between them was one of employment, with the result that the minister was entitled to bring an unfair dismissal claim. While the spiritual nature of the minister's duties is a relevant consideration, the House of Lord's decision in Percy v Church of Scotland Board of National Mission established that there is no longer a presumption
that the duties of a minister of religion are inconsistent with the existence of a contract of employment.
Document number: 07 12 103
Regent Security Services Ltd v Power, Court of Appeal
TUPE does not Prevent Employees from Obtaining Additional Rights
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: Following a TUPE-transfer, an employee's contractual retirement age was validly varied from 60 to 65 with the result that, when dismissed at the age of 60, he was free to pursue a claim of unfair dismissal. The transfer-connected variation was not rendered void as, unlike a protected employee, a transferee employer cannot rely on TUPE to resile from a contract he has entered into.
Document number: 07 12 107
Sinclair v Wandsworth Council, EAT
Failure to Apply Alcohol Policy Rendered Dismissal Unfair
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A tribunal was entitled to find that an employer's failure to implement its alcohol policy when disciplining an employee with an alcohol problem rendered the employee's dismissal unfair. However, the tribunal erred in deciding that the employee's being unfit to work could not amount the contributory conduct for the purposes of assessing his compensation. An employee's unacceptable conduct should not be ignored in this context simply because it is connected with a background or underlying illness.
Document number: 07 12 106
Arthur v Northern Ireland Housing Executive and SHL (UK) Ltd, Northern Ireland
Reasonable Adjustments to Psychometric Tests
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employer who allowed a dyslexic job applicant extra time to complete pre-interview aptitude tests had fulfilled its duty to make reasonable adjustments. It was clear on the facts that the adjustments made to the test had placed the disabled applicant on the same footing as other candidates so that he was no longer at any substantial disadvantage. .
Document number: 07 11 54
Bloxham v Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, London Central Employment Tribunal.
Age Discrimination Pension Changes were Justified.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: Transitional arrangements for the reform of a law firm's pension scheme amounted to less favourable treatment of the claimant on the ground of age. However, the treatment was a proportionate response to the need to tackle 'intergenerational unfairness' in the scheme, and so the claim of direct discrimination under the Age Regulations failed.
Document number: 07 11 2 E
Court v Dennis Publishing Ltd, London Central Employment Tribunal.
Additional Information: A publishing company directly discriminated against a 55-year-old senior employee on the ground of his age when it selected him for redundancy. A number of factors led the tribunal to draw an inference of discrimination, including a general culture within the company that younger, cheaper employees were preferable to older, more expensive staff. Claims of unfair dismissal and breach of contract also succeeded.
Document number: 07 11 3 E
Jacksonv Computershare Investor Services plc, Court of Appeal.
TUPE cannot Create Rights that did not Exist Prior to Transfer.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations cannot be relied upon to artificially create rights that a transferred employee did not enjoy prior to transfer. An employment tribunal had therefore erred in finding that the claimant, who had transferred in 2004, was entitled to a contractual benefit only available to employees who had joined the transferee before March 2002, even though TUPE treated her as having been employed continuously by the transferee since 1999.
Document number: 07 11 52
Jouini v Princess Personal Service GmbH, ECJ.
Directive Applies to Temporary Employment Business.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: The European Court of Justice confirms that the Acquired Rights Directive can apply to the transfer of employees between temporary employment businesses where some of the administrative personnel and some of the temporary employees are transferred to another temporary employment business in order to carry out the same activities for the same clients.
Document number: 07 11 51
Middlesbrough Borough Council v Surtees and ors, EAT.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employer was not precluded from calling its own expert to challenge the methodology of an independent expert appointed by a tribunal to produce a report on whether a claimant and a comparator performed work of equal value. Evidence from a party's own expert will not be admissible, however, in so far as it challenges facts already found by the tribunal or agreed between the parties.
Document number: 07 11 53
Muschett v London Borough of Hounslow; Khan v London Probation Service;
Ogbuneke v Minister Lodge and ors; Tallington Lakes Ltd v Reilly and anor, EAT
EAT Guidance on Extensions of Time for Lodging Appeals.
Additional Information: In four conjoined cases, the EAT sets out the principles for exercising its discretion to extend the time to appeal. Notices of Appeal must be accompanied by the documents stipulated in the EAT rules 1993 and the Practice Direction 2004, and the time limit will only be extended in highly exceptional circumstances, where a party has demonstrated good reasons for failing to appeal during the course of the entire period in which the appeal should have been lodged. Litigants in person will be held to the same standard as those with professional advisers.
Document number: 07 11 4 E
Palacios de la Villa v Cortefiel Servicios SA, ECJ.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A Spanish law permitting compulsory retirement was not in breach of the prohibition on age discrimination laid down by the EC Equal Treatment Framework Directive. Although national laws providing for compulsory retirement are not automatically excluded from the Directive's scope, the legislation in question was an appropriate and necessary means of checking unemployment and encouraging recruitment, and so its discriminatory effect was objectively justified.
Document number: 07 11 1 E
UK Coal Mining Ltd v National Union of Mineworkers (Northumberland Area) and anor, EAT.
Duty to Consult over Reason for Redundancies.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: Where a workplace closure inevitably involves making employees redundant, the employer is obliged to consult over the reasons for this closure. This is in line with the EC Collective Redundancies Directive and earlier authorities suggesting otherwise are no longer good law.
Document number: 07 11 50
Luke v Stoke on Trent City Council, Court of Appeal.
No Need to Imply Temporary Mobility Clause.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A tribunal had not erred in finding that an employer was entitled to stop paying wages to an employee who was not working. She had refused to accept the employer's reasonable terms on which to return to work following the investigation of her bullying complaints, and had rejected offers of temporary placement at a different location. Where the tribunal had erred, however, was in reaching this conclusion by implying an irrelevant contractual right temporarily to redeploy the employee until she could return to her usual place of work - her original job was still available and all she had to do was accept the employer's conditions for return, but she had not done so.
Document number: 07 10 2 E
McAdie v Royal Bank of Scotland plc
Dismissal Fair Despite Employer Causing Incapacity.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employment tribunal had erred in finding that an employee had been unfairly dismissed on ill-health grounds. When considering the reasonableness of the dismissal, the tribunal had been entitled to take into account the fact that the employer had itself caused that incapacity. However, the tribunal had failed to ask itself whether dismissal was a reasonable response in the circumstances. If it had done so, it could only have found that dismissal was reasonable - the employee had expressly stated that she would never return to work.
Document number: 07 10 5 E
Secretary of State for Health and anor V Rance and ors and other cases, EAT.
New Point Could be Taken on Appeal.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employer responding to several thousand equal pay claims could benefit from the EAT's discretion to hear on appeal a point of law conceded or not taken before the tribunal, in circumstances where liability had been admitted through administrative error. Although the EAT should exercise its discretion only exceptionally, the facts of the present case - including that a concession had been made through error rather than as a tactical decision and that the employer had attempted to raise the point on review before appealing - justified such an exercise.
Document number: 07 10 3 E
Wood Group Engineering (North Sea) Ltd v Robertson, EAT
Agency Worker not Employee of End-user.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An agency worker could not claim to have been employed under an implied contract of employment with the end-user of her services where the working relationship between them was adequately explained by express contractual arrangements.
Document number: 07 10 1 E
Commissioners for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs v Thorn Baker Ltd and ors.
Agency Worker on Three-month Contact has no Right to SSP.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An agency worker was not entitled to claim statutory sick pay because he was employed on contract for a specified period of no more then three months. Although the statutory provision excluding those on three-month contracts from claiming SSP was repealed by the Fixed-term Employees Regulations in 2002, the worker could not avail himself of that repealing provision because the 2002 Regulations do not have effect in relation to agency workers.
Document number: 07 9 63 E
Enfield Technical Services Ltd v Payne; Grace v BF Components Ltd, EAT.
Contract Not Illegal in the Absence of Misrepresentation.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: The doctrine of illegality did not apply to prevent two employees, who had claimed to be self-employed in order to minimise their tax liability, from claiming unfair dismissal. Although the employees had wrongly characterised their employment relationships, they had done so in good faith; and in the absence of misrepresentation or an attempt to conceal the true facts, there was no illegality.
Document number: 07 9 62 E
GMB v Allen and ors, EAT.
Uniondid not Discriminate Against Equal Pay Claimants.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A trade union was not guilty of indirect sex discrimination in achieving low-level settlements in respect of female members' equal pay claims against a council. In the context of negotiating the implementation of a new collective agreement, the union was justified in placing greater emphasis on securing pay protection for its members than on equal pay cliamants' attempts to receive monies in respect of past discrimination. The union's stance in this regard was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, regardless of whether its methods of persuading the female members to settle their claims were appropriate.
Document number: 07 9 60 E
Queenscourt Ltd v Nyateka
Racial Banter No Bar to Harassment.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employee who complained that her manager had made a racially offensive comment to her was not precluded from bringing a claim of racial harassment simply because there was a high level of racist and sexist banter in the workplace in which she herself had allegedly engaged. .
Document number: 07 9 64 E
Reany v Hereford Diocesan Board of Finance
Gay Job Applicant Wins Case Against the Church.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: The Hereford Diocese directly discriminated against a gay job applicant on the ground of his sexual orientation in rejecting him for the post of Diocesan Youth Officer. With regard to the 'organised religion' exception in Sexual Orientation Regulations, the post in question did fall within the small number of jobs outside the clergy that are 'for purposes of an organised religion', and the Diocese was able to have in place a job related requirement that the claimant remain celibate. However, the Diocese was not entitled to reject the claimant's job application with reference to that requirement, as its failure to be satisfied that he met it was not reasonable.
Document number: 07 9 61 E
Beckett Investment Management Group Ltd and ors v Hall and ors, Court of Appeal.
Non-dealing Covenant was Enforceable.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A 12-month restriction on financial advisers with clients of their former employer was reasonable in the light of the seniority and the importance of the employees and all that the employer would have to do to maintain client loyalty following their departure. Moreover, although the restriction was stated to apply to clients of the holding company in the employer's group of companies, it was also applied to clients of the subsidiary company for whom the employees actually worked. A pursuit approach to the question of corporate personality would have rendered the covenant futile.
Document number: 07 8 103 E
Hunt v Storm Communications Ltd and ors, Reading Employment Tribunal.
PR Professional Transferred Under New Service Provision Rules .
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A 'service provision change' transfer occurred under TUPE 2006 where a client company changed its provider of specialist public relations services. The claimant, a PR professional who spent around 70 per cent of her working time on the client's account, comprised an 'organized grouping of employees' whose 'principal purpose' was carrying out the relevant activates on behalf of the client. In the circumstances, her employment transferred under TUPE to the new service provider.
Document number: 07 8 105 E
Lloyd-Briden v Worthing College, EAT.
Upper Age Limit on Unfair Dismissal was not Unlawful.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employment tribunal had been correct to strike out a claim of unfair dismissal where the claimant was aged 82 at the time of the dismissal, an it had not yet been obliged to set aside the now-repealed statutory bar on persons over 65 claiming unfair dismissal.
Document number: 07 8 108 E
Middlesbrough Borough Council v Surtees and ors, EAT.
Employer's Pay Protection Approach was Justified.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employer's decision to offer pay protection to only employees who, following the introduction of a job evaluation scheme, would otherwise have suffered an actual drop in pay, was objectively justified. This was so notwithstanding the fact - established at a later date - that contrary to equal pay law, some female employees were being underpaid at that time, and would have qualified for pay protection had the employer been paying them the correct rate.
Document number: 07 8 104 E
Oyarce v Cheshire County Council
Reverse Burden of Proof Does Not Apply to Race Victimisation.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: An employment tribunal had errs in applying the reverse burden of proof provisions in S.54A of the Race Relations Act 1976 in a claim where a care worker argued that she had been victimised for having made a previous claim of race discrimination. On a proper construction of S.54A, the reverse burden of proof applies only to claims of direct and indirect discrimination or racial harassment, and not to claims of victimisation.
Document number: 07 8 101 E
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry v Slater and ors, EAT.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: A transferee was liable for transferor's outstanding liabilities on regard to back pay and holiday pay owed to employees of an insolvent company. The transferee could not rely on a provision in the Transfer Regulations that would have placed responsibility on the Secretary of State to make the payments out of the National Insurance Fund because insolvency proceedings were not in place when the business transferred.
Document number: 07 8 107 E
South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council v Anderson and ors.
Bonus Schemes were Discriminatory.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: Women employed by a local education authority were entitled to equal pay to that of male comparators who had received substantial productivity-related bonuses under schemes which were not available to the women. The EAT upheld a tribunal's ruling that the local authority failed to show that the differences in pay were by reason of genuine material factor which was not the difference of sex.
Document number: 07 8 109 E
Williams v University of Nottingham, EAT.
Territorial scope of disability discrimination legislation.
Journal: IDS Brief
Additional Information: The House of Lords' test for determining whether an employee working wholly abroad can claim unfair dismissal under the Employment Rights Act 1996 applies equally to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Their Lordships' requirement that oversees employees must have worked 'for the purpose of a business carried on in Great Britain' mirrors that contained in the DDA so closely that they must have intended the same approach to apply to both Acts.
Document number: 07 8 102 E
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