An employer has an obligation to operate in a fashion that avoids sex, race, disability, religious discrimination and also on the grounds of sexual orientation, and from October 2006 Age.

By virtue of seniority and experience the best paid staff are likely to be the older ones. If an individual feels that he/she has been passed over for promotion or selected for redundancy on the grounds of age, then that person is likely to have a great deal at stake leading them to consider a claim on the grounds of age discrimination as future loss of earnings may be significant.

An employer may be responsible for the actions of its staff particularly if there is harassment. The Equal Treatment Directive 2002/73/BC defined sexual harassment as taking place “when unwanted conduct related to the sex of the person occurs with the purpose for effect of violating the dignity of the person and/or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. This definition of harassment was adopted for the other forms of discrimination by the UK in 2003 with appropriate changes.

Discrimination surfaces in all manner of surprising ways. Anybody on maternity leave or long term sick leave will need to be kept in the loop so far as information and vacancies are concerned. In the case of Visa International Service Association v Paul EAT 2004 IRLR 42 it was held that a woman absent on maternity leave had the right to be notified of matters that might be relevant to her career. This included job opportunities or promotions. In her case she claimed that a position of Operating Regulations Analyst filled by an external candidate, was a vacancy and a promotion in which she might have been interested. Having failed to be notified she resigned from Visa on 23 January 2001 and made a claim of constructive dismissal and sex discrimination and the automatically unfair ground of pregnancy related dismissal. The Tribunal held that there had been a breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence and the dismissal was directly due to her maternity leave and was therefore automatically unfair. She was awarded a total of £25,900 as compensation

At Employment Relations we have successfully brought many discrimination cases on all the statutory grounds for claimants and can advise you on any concerns you may have.

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