Sector focus
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has rejected a council's claim that it was required by an enactment to place a cap on the redundancy pay of an older worker who had reached civil service pension age.
The Court of Appeal has held that, while an occupational health report can assist employers in deciding whether or not an employee is disabled, it is up to the employer itself to make the final judgment as to whether or not the employee is covered by disability discrimination legislation. Employers must not simply "rubber stamp" the medical adviser's opinion.
This employment tribunal punished a large employer's failure to follow the "Acas code of practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures" by awarding a combined total of over £100,000 to two claimants who were unfairly dismissed.
Assumptions that an individual accused of sexual harassment must be guilty can be costly, as this council found out after a tribunal awarded the claimant £169,000 for sex discrimination and constructive dismissal.
The Supreme Court has held that the fact that the work of the claimants' chosen comparators has to be carried on in a different place of work out of necessity is no barrier to bringing an equal pay claim.
The employment tribunal in this case concluded that it was open to an NHS trust to decide not to renew a consultant anaesthetist's fixed-term contract because it had recruited a number of permanent anaesthetists to take on the work.
In this age discrimination case, the police successfully defended a claim by a police officer who left after being chosen for redeployment, but not before the employment tribunal described its cost-cutting exercise as "shambolic" and "to some degree incompetent".
This case is a useful early example, along with Williams v Ystrad Mynach College ET/1600019/11, of how employment tribunals are approaching the new concept of "discrimination arising from disability" under the Equality Act 2010. The claimant fell at the first hurdle by failing to demonstrate a link between his disability and his treatment by the employer.
This tribunal decision provides a stark reminder to employers of the information on agency workers that they have been required to produce during redundancy and TUPE consultations since amendments to legislation made on 1 October 2011.
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