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Employment law update: June
June 23rd, 2010
Our employment law update will now be published online as well as through email. Here is an update for June
A varied addition of our e-mail update for you this month. The big news of course has been the change in government that took place last month with the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats forming our new Coalition Government. Let’s wait and see what the new government can bring to the table with regards employment rights. In the meantime, here are a few snap shots of recent cases through the Court of Appeal / Employment Appeals Tribunal.
From sick notes to Fit notes
You will recall that we reported in our April bulletin on the introduction of the new “fit note”. The new fit note regime has now been in nearly 2 months and so we would urge representatives to consider whether the new fit note regime now has an impact on any of their policies within the workplace for example, sickness policy, disability policy, absence procedure.
If you need any assistance with this, please do not hesitate to contact us for assistance.
Equal Pay
Last month, the EAT handed down it’s decision in the case of City of Edinburgh v Wilkison & Ors which is a case addressing how equal pay comparators can be identified. This is a case where “Administrative, Technical, Professional and Clerical” workers tried to compare themselves to male workers employed in “manual jobs” such as gardeners, refuse collectors and grave diggers.
In her judgment, the honourable Lady Smith further expanded the current rationale regarding how comparators can be identified in equal pay cases. In her judgment, Lady Smith made a number of leading assertions, perhaps the most interesting of which was that she held that the starting point for determining whether a claimant and their comparator worked in the same “establishment” in cases brought against a Council, must be that they do work in the same establishment and the presumption should only be set aside if facts show that there were different establishments.
The honourable Lady Smith has been a rather prominent figure in leading equal pay judgments of late.
Salford NHS Trust v Roldan
A Court of Appeal case decided last month has provided guidance when dealing with fairness dismissals at tribunal.
Firstly the Appeal court confirmed that the more serious the consequences of dismissal are for an employee, the more thorough an investigation should be conducted. This was a case that involved a Fillipino nurse who was at risk of deportation if she was dismissed.
The second proposition established in this case was that if there is a conflict of evidence between the accounts of 2 witnesses, an employer does not have to believe one witness in order to disbelieve the other. The Court confirmed that in these circumstances it would be acceptable to give the alleged wrongdoer the ‘benefit of the doubt’.
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/522.html
Disability Discrimination
The EAT handed down their judgment at the end of April in the case of Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police v Jelic which is case involving disability discrimination and reasonable adjustments. In this case, the EAT confirmed that job swapping could amount to a reasonable adjustment in the workplace and such an adjustment was not beyond the intention of parliament when the Disability Discrimination Act was conceived. The EAT also found that retiring an employee on the grounds of ill health and then re-engaging them in a new role could not be a reasonable adjustment.
http://www.employmentappeals.gov.uk/Public/Upload/09_0491RJSBCEAJelic.doc
