The refusal by employers at the UK’s newest university to extend the contract of a 65-year-old lecturer has prompted accusations of age discrimination from the University and College Union (UCU).

Vikki Harrhy, a lecturer in sports studies at Ormskirk’s Edge Hill University, submitted a request to continue in her post beyond the age of 65; according to the UCU, her request was refused without explanation.

Under new laws on age discrimination, employers are obliged only to “consider” all applications from employees to continue working beyond retirement age. But UCU north-west official Adrian Jones said that Edge Hill’s behaviour “insulted the spirit” of the legislation.

“It also reveals the futility of this so-called ‘law’ where an employee’s request to work beyond normal retirement age can be rejected for no good reason,” he added.

UCU head of equality Roger Kline added: “It’s quite astonishing that Edge Hill University appears determined to put itself at the bottom of the league table for good equality practices. It’s outrageous that a lecturer with nearly four decades’ unblemished service is being treated in this way.

“Some universities have a very long way to go before they implement good equality practice on age discrimination.”

UCU press release, March 16, 2007

Since the introduction of the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 and the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, new research shows that workplace discrimination claims centred on the Regulations are dominated by claims of bullying and harassment.

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) research on the impact of the Regulations shows that discrimination allegations regarding sexual orientation were dominated by claims of bullying and harassment, including name calling, threats and physical assaults.

Equally, religion and belief in employment tribunal claims included many instances of bullying and harassment. But another key theme involved claims stemming from difficulties over working hours, time-off, leave to follow religious practices, promotion or retirement and workplace dress codes.

ACAS also found that:

• between January 2004 and September 2006: 470 individuals brought employment tribunal claims where the main allegation was sexual orientation discrimination and 461 brought cases centred on religion or belief;
• two thirds of claims were brought by men;
• 66 per cent of religion or belief claims included allegations of race discrimination as a secondary jurisdiction;
• from the claimant’s perspective, workplace grievance procedures, whether they exist, were found to be an unsatisfactory arrangement for resolving their complaints; getting help from an adviser or representative was perceived as especially important in these cases.

ACAS press release, April 2, 2007

Two interpreters have been awarded £120,000 after suing the Home Office for unfair dismissal.

Marti Khan and Odette King argued that, following outsourcing of their work at Heathrow Airport in 1990, their employer failed to reassign them to other roles. When they complained to the Home Secretary, they were sacked from their jobs.

An Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled in February 2007 that they had both suffered race and sex discrimination and should be reinstated in similar roles within 28 days.

In a judgment released on March 19, the tribunal ordered the Home Office to pay both women their salaries of £25,689 from February 5, 2005, a total of at least £102,000. It was also ordered the Home Office to pay them both £18,750 damages as well as a shift allowance, pensions payments and an extra four weeks’ pay.

At the Appeal Judge Jeremy McMullen said: “What happens when one of Britain’s least impressive managements, by its sole consistent attribute of procrastination, drives two long-service Asian women to become uncooperative and dismissive?”

“The answer is systematic race and sex discrimination against them and dismissals unfair according to every tenet in the canon, rightly found by an employment tribunal.”

BBC, March 20, 2007

It is less than three years since the DTI introduced complicated rules obliging employers and employees to complete specified procedures as a condition of being able to bring many types of claim to an employment tribunal.

The intention was good – to encourage “out of court” settlements. However the practice was, to put it politely, less than satisfactory. The good news for everyone is that it now seems almost certain that these rules will soon be completely scrapped.

At present the rules have draconian effects for both employers and employees. They make a dismissal automatically unfair if an employer does not follow specified procedures within precise time limits and they make it impossible for an employee to bring many types of claim if he or she fails to implement specified grievance procedures within precise time limits. In spite of the best efforts of tribunals, especially the Employment Appeal Tribunal, to interpret the small print in as practical a way as possible, the new rules resulted in a welter of legalistic arguments by employers, employees and their representatives and failed to achieve either fairness or the intended massive reduction in the number of employment tribunal claims.

Problems became apparent from early on and the government set up a review at the end of 2006 (interestingly there were no practising lawyers on the review panel although the eminent head of legal at the Employers Engineering Federation was a member). The resulting Gibbons Review recommends scrapping the 2004 Dispute Resolution regulations and replacing them with a non-prescriptive system. The Review sensibly recommends an increased role for mediation with greater emphasis on the part to be played by ACAS. The good intentions remain – to encourage “out of court” settlements of employment disputes – and hopefully this time the DTI, which has issued a consultation document on the subject, will get it right.

www.emplaw.co.uk, April 2, 2007

Posters warning customers against violent or threatening behaviour towards staff are to be displayed in Tesco supermarkets as part of a campaign launched by the retailer in partnership with the retail union USDAW.

The union’s ‘Freedom From Fear’ campaign was launched in 2003 in a bid to reduce the incidence of employee abuse in the retail sector. Ninety-five per cent of USDAW members have reported being verbally abused at some point in their careers.

“We’re delighted that Tesco and USDAW have worked together to develop these posters designed to remind a small minority of customers that their abusive behaviour will not be tolerated,” said USDAW general secretary John Hannett. “The notices behind customer service desks remind customers that Tesco provides a safe environment for staff and customers so any physical assaults or verbal abuse will not be tolerated.

“The fact that Tesco’s chief executive and USDAW’s general secretary have come together to launch this initiative shows the battle to stamp out abuse aimed at hard working staff is being taken seriously from the top down.”

USDAW press release, April 5, 2007

Guidance to help managers deal with conflict in the workplace has been published by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS).

The booklet, Managing Conflict at Work, covers the signs, causes, management and prevention of conflict as well as sources of help available, such as mediation and arbitration.

Conflict at work can escalate into claims being brought at an employment tribunal, with a recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development showing that the average cost associated with claims is estimated at almost £20,000 per employing organisation each year; employers spend an average of 15 days management time dealing with a claim.

ACAS chair Rita Donaghy said: “Conflict is a fact of life, but the effect it has on your organisation depends on how you manage it. When managers are not given the necessary skills to resolve issues, it can often seem easier to avoid the situation and hope it will go away, but that is how problems escalate.

“The benefits of being proactive about conflict management can be significant. The recent CIPD survey shows that those organisations which provide training in mediation skills typically receive fewer employment tribunal claims than those that do not.

“So there are real benefits in ensuring employees have the necessary skills to effectively manage conflict.”

Copies of the booklet, which is free of charge, are available from: www.acas.org.uk

ACAS press release, March 19, 2007

Workers at many workplaces are entitled to time off for bank holidays. But what about part-timers?

A Mr McMenemy worked only on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays so it was fine for him to take to take off Good Friday. But most bank holidays fall on a Monday so, wanting time off in lieu, he made a claim under the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000. He has lost. The Scottish Court of Session agreed with the EAT that the reason he lost out was not because he was a part-timer but was simply because he did not work Mondays. Therefore he could not claim the protection of the regulations.

www.emplaw.co.uk, April 2, 2007

The Government has published the Employment Equality (Age) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2007 (SI 2007 825), which make a number of changes to other legislation in response to the introduction of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 (SI 2006 1031).

The most notable aspects of the changes are:

• the amendment of s.105 Employment Rights Act 1996, so that a dismissal will be unfair if the reason for dismissal is the employee exercising, or seeking to exercise, his or her right to be accompanied, or to accompany another, at a meeting to request working beyond the intended date of retirement under sch.6 para.9 of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006;
• the amendment of r.7(3) and r.14(2) of the Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004 (SI 2004 752), so that complaints of age discrimination are treated in the same way as complaints under any other discrimination legislation;
• the addition of the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 to the list in sch.1 para.22(1) of the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2004 (SI 2004 1861), which will exempt age discrimination claims from the requirement for a fixed conciliation period of 13 weeks. This particular change is likely to be of little practical effect, since the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service has been treating age claims as if they were already included in the list.

The changes will come into force on April 6, 2007.

Copies of the Regulations are available from: www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2007/20070825.htm

Income Data Services, March 21, 2007

A carers organisation has launched a free resource pack for employers to help them get to grips with some of the changes under the Work and Families Act.

From April 6, 2007 the Act extends the right to request flexible work to employees who care or are expecting to care for an adult, with around 2.6 million workers set to gain from the new law.

In light of this, CarersUK, in conjunction with the Department of Trade and Industry and other organisations such as ACAS and the British Chambers of Commerce, has published a pack for employers containing:

• a booklet for explaining the basics about how to support carers and the business benefits it can bring;
• a booklet aimed at employees with a caring responsibility explaining their basic rights and ways they can work with their employers to help balance work and care;
• research into the business benefits of supporting carers;
• a training tool explaining the issues around carers in the workforce;
• a leaflet from ACAS explaining the right to flexible working.

Further information: Copies of the resource pack are available from: www.carersuk.org/Employersforcarers/EmployersPack2007

CarersUK press release, April, 2007

UK employers are increasingly judging potential candidates on their internet reputations, according to a new poll.

The survey, by business social network Viadeo, found that a fifth of employers had searched for and found information about prospective employees on the internet with nearly 60 per cent admitting that it had influenced their recruitment decision. A quarter of recruiters surveyed said that they had rejected applicants on the basis of personal information they had found online.

“These results should act as a wake-up call to anyone who has ever posted personal information online,” Peter Cunningham, UK manager of Viadeo, said.

“Millions of people are inadvertently contributing to their internet reputations every day by leaving personal information online much of which is cached and remains available via search engines even after the author has removed the web page. When people who are not the original intended audience – such as potential employers – find this information it can have a major impact on their decision making process.”

Recruiter magazine, March 28, 2007

Whistleblowing is defined in Chambers dictionary as “Giving information (usually to the authorities) about illegal and underhand practices”.

As is well known, in response to scandals such as the Maxwell affair and the Clapham Junction rail and Zebrugge ferry disasters after each of which official enquiries revealed that workers had been too scared to sound the alarm, British employment law was changed to give workers rights if they suffer as a result of whistleblowing. While well and good in theory, there is devil in the practical detail.

For example, to claim protection a worker must act in good faith and have a reasonable belief that what he or she is disclosing is wrongdoing for which protection is provided – which includes breach of a “legal obligation” or activity likely to lead to a “criminal offence”. But what happens if a worker, in good faith, discloses information about something he genuinely and reasonably thinks is a breach of a legal obligation or is likely to result in a crime but in law there was no legal obligation and no criminal offence?

In that situation employers have argued successfully that a belief cannot be “reasonable” if it is belief in something which does not exist. The Court of Appeal has now finally nailed that argument on the head. The case in question concerned an American lecturer working in London who was disciplined for going to the FBI and the CIA when he thought a colleague was inciting racial hatred. An employment tribunal and the EAT both decided that he could not claim compensation under the whistleblowing rules. There was no relevant criminal offence or legal obligation and therefore, they said, it could not have been reasonable to believe the contrary. The Court of Appeal has now overruled that decision, saying it is irrelevant that a worker’s belief turns out to be wrong if, objectively considered, it was reasonable for him to have had that belief. The Court pointed out that a worker cannot be expected to know the finer nuances of criminal law and therefore that should not be the determining factor in deciding whether he can claim whistleblowing protection.

www.emplaw.co.uk, April 2, 2007

Levy & McRae have been retained to represent Rangers Football Club in respect of disciplinary charges before UEFA arising out of the Osasuna v Rangers football match on 14 March 2007.