Harassment has been in the legal news again this month.
Anthony harasses Belinda if he does something in relation to a protected characteristic (race, sex etc) which has the purpose or effect of violating Belinda’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her. The connection between the protected characteristic and the conduct is key. The burden of proof – who must prove what – is important in discrimination cases too. If an employee can prove facts from which, in the absence of another explanation, a tribunal could conclude harassment has occurred, then the burden of proof shifts to the employer to show that it did not happen. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has looked at both these issues in Raj v Capita Business Services.
The Government Equalities Office has told the Treasury Select Committee that it is planning to extend the gender pay gap reporting obligations. The gender pay gap refers to the fact that average pay for men is greater than average pay for women. Since 2017, companies with 250 or more employees must publish their gender pay gap figures.
If employees are underpaid for their holiday, they can bring an unlawful deduction from wages claim. A claim must be submitted within 3 months of the underpayment, or the last in any series of deductions. In the case of Bear Scotland v Fulton, the Employment Appeal Tribunal said that a break of three months or more between deductions will break the series. This significantly limits how far back employees can go, because holidays will often be three months or more apart.
According to a recent survey of 1000 vegan employees and 1000 employers, almost half of vegan employees have felt discriminated against by their employers. 31 per cent said they had felt harassed at work or treated unfairly due to their veganism. The survey also revealed that almost half of employers did nothing to accommodate their vegan employees. The results suggested that employees were encouraged to keep their views to themselves and to fit in at company functions which had limited menu choices.
PHI provides employees with pay during long term sickness or incapacity. Policies can define incapacity differently. Some policies define it as an employee’s inability to return to their actual job. Some policies define it as an inability to return to any job. Sometimes the courts get involved if the parties don’t agree on the meaning of the policy terms, as was the case in ICTS v Visram.
The holiday season is upon us and the next instalment of the Flowers v East of England Ambulance Trust saga has arrived from the Court of Appeal. The case involves voluntary overtime and whether it should be included when calculating holiday pay. European law says that holiday pay should be based on ‘normal remuneration’. If pay or hours vary, then an employer must look at the previous 12 weeks and pay the average.
Indirect age discrimination is where a policy that is applied to all employees negatively affects people in a certain age group. An indirectly discriminatory policy can be justified if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. A legitimate aim of saving costs, on its own, is not enough to justify a discriminatory policy.
If an employee wins their unfair dismissal claim, a tribunal can order compensation. They also have the power to order reinstatement (to the old job) or reengagement (to a comparable job). A tribunal might not make such an order if it is not ‘practicable’, for example if the relationship between employer and employee has broken down completely. But what happens when a tribunal orders reengagement but the employer refuses – can the employee force the employer to reengage them?
Discrimination arising from disability happens when an employer treats an employee unfavourably because of something that arises because of their disability (and which cannot be objectively justified). However, an employer will not be liable if they didn’t know the employee was disabled and could not reasonably have been expected to know.
Back in 2000, legislation was introduced to ensure individuals who operated as independent contractors but who worked like employees, paid broadly the same tax and national insurance contributions as employees. The ‘off-payroll working rules’ are commonly referred to as IR35. With around 900,000 contractors operating in this way, this legislation affected a not insignificant part of the workforce.
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Harassment has been in the legal news again this month.