Equality, diversity and human rights
In Page v Freight Hire (Tank Haulage) Ltd [1981] IRLR 13 EAT, the EAT held that the employer was protected by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, section 51(1) because refusing to allow the employee to transport dimethyl formamide was necessary to comply with the employer's duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and was not an act of excessive caution.
In Panesar v The Nestle Co Ltd [1980] IRLR 64 CA, the Court of Appeal held that the respondents' rule forbidding beards in their chocolate factory was "justifiable" within the meaning of the Race Relations Act 1976, section 1(1)(b).
In Malik v British Home Stores [1980] ET/2901/79, the employment tribunal found that it was unlawful indirect race discrimination to require a Muslim woman of Pakistani origin to wear a uniform of an overall over a skirt.
In Jeremiah v Ministry of Defence [1979] IRLR 436 CA, the Court of Appeal held that "subjecting to detriment" in the context of discrimination by employers, does not mean anything more than "putting under a disadvantage".
In Pointon v The University of Sussex [1979] IRLR 119 CA, the Court of Appeal held that the appellant's claim under the Equal Pay Act could not be sustained because there was no term in her contract of employment that was less favourable than the equivalent term in the contract of the man with whom she was comparing herself.
In Dance v Dorothy Perkins Ltd [1978] ICR 760 EAT, the Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld a decision that female warehouse selectors were not engaged on like work with male warehouse operators. The men did significant additional duties to those done by the women.
In Ahmad v Inner London Education Authority [1977] ICR 490 CA, the Court of Appeal held that the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion established by Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights does not entitle an employee to be absent from work for the purpose of religious worship in breach of contract.
Rules which lay down standards of dress and appearance for both women and men are unlikely to constitute unlawful discrimination on grounds of sex, even if they impose different requirements on women (such as prohibition on wearing trousers) than on men, based on the difference in sexes. This is the principle which emerges from the recent EAT case of Schmidt v Austicks Bookshops.
In the same way that the EAT's interpretations resuscitated the Equal Pay Act, recent decisions would now appear to be giving the Sex Discrimination Act a new lease of life. In Price v The Civil Service Commission and Steel v The Post Office, the EAT takes the same broad, commonsense approach to the indirect discrimination provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act that it has to the like work provisions of the Equal Pay Act.
That men employed on like work with women are in a special "red-circled" category does not automatically provide a defence to a claim for equal pay on grounds that the variation in pay is genuinely due to a material difference, other than the difference of sex, between the men's case and that of the women. This is the major principle established by the EAT in a joint judgment in respect of two "red-circling" appeals - Snoxell and Davies v Vauxhall Motors Ltd and Charles Early & Marriott (Witney) Ltd v Smith and Ball.
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