A City worker’s £1.35m claim for sexual discrimination has been backed by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC).

Katherina Tofeji, a former trader with investment bank BNP Paribas, is seeking to overturn a ruling that she did not suffer sex discrimination when she was prevented from returning to her old role after maternity leave.

Miss Tofeji argues that, on her return, she was placed in a vulnerable position as all her clients had been reassigned and a male colleague had been assigned permanently to her team. She was also told that she needed to justify the return of any clients to her and refused flexible working hours.

In June this year an employment tribunal dismissed her claims for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination and ruled that her employers did not breach regulations by “allegedly failing to allow the claimant to return to the job in which she was employed before her absence on maternity leave or to another suitable and appropriate job”.

Miss Tofeji’s appeal will argue that the tribunal wrongly compared her treatment with how a man on leave for a similar period would have been treated.

“Pregnant women are in a unique position, so it is not the correct approach simply to compare the situation to someone who has not been pregnant,” the EOC said.

EOC chair Jenny Watson added: “We know from our research that many women experience discrimination upon return from maternity leave and suffer considerable stress and hardship as a result. Miss Tofeji’s case provides yet another reminder of how easily the thin veneer of equality can crack when working women start a family.”

A date for the appeal hearing is due to be announced in the next few weeks.

Financial Times, September 13, 2007

Workers who lost their jobs without warning when factories were shut down have won protective awards totalling £800,000.

The 191 workers at Simclar (Ayrshire) Ltd, now in administration, took their cases to an employment tribunal. They complained they or their representatives had not been consulted about their fates prior to the shock news that they were to lose their jobs.

The tribunal heard that workers, some of whom had more than 20 years’ service, reported for duty on January 29 and found the electrical components factory was closed.

All workers were given a written statement explaining why the premises were closed.

It stated the firm was stopping manufacturing at both the Irvine and Kilwinning site.

The workers claimed the news came without warning and there had been no consultation of any sort.

The Glasgow tribunal ruled the firm had failed to comply with the requirements to consult with the trade union and awarded a protective award in favour of all the workers for 90 days, a total of up to an estimated £4,000 per worker – or almost £800,000 in total.

Tribunal chairman Michael MacMillan said there had been “no consultation whatsoever” and the company took no steps to comply with its obligations under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

The workers will now have to apply to the Redundancy Payments Office for their payments.

Evening Times, September 5, 2007

An employee secretly filmed at the beach while on sick leave was unfairly dismissed, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Swansea Council was accused of carrying out a “deliberate and cruel” attack on ex-worker Malcolm Honey after hiring private detectives to check up on him while he was off sick.

Mr Honey was filmed returning from a friends holiday cottage in July while off sick for three weeks with bronchitis and subsequently dismissed for “breach of trust”. He claimed he did not regard his time at the cottage as a holiday and that his employers were aware he regularly visited it.

Employment Tribunal chairman Rachel Davies said: “Our conclusion is that the respondent’s (the council’s) conduct was consistent with a deliberate and cruel attack on Mr Honey’s credibility for which there were no grounds.” The Council had shown “a determination to catch Mr Honey out”, she added.

Unison’s Paul Elliot welcomed the ruling: “We’re delighted that the tribunal has upheld our member’s claim for unfair dismissal, he said.

“The tribunal stated that it did not believe that the council genuinely thought that Mr Honey had committed the alleged misconduct and their suspicions were based on spurious grounds . . . this is unacceptable behaviour.”

Swansea Council is seeking a judicial review of the ruling.

August 30, 2007

The Government pledged yesterday to address the pay gap between the sexes after surveys revealed that salaries of female managers had fallen even farther behind those of male colleagues, despite women being promoted more quickly.

Harriet Harman, the Minister for Women, said that discriminatory pay was unfair and inefficient because it prevents women achieving their potential.

Ms Harman was responding to a call by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) for new laws to tackle discrimination and a survey of 42,000 workers by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), which found that the pay gap between women and men had grown, despite the progress that female workers had made in obtaining positions of authority.

The CMI survey of managers in every sector found that women earned an average of £43,571 last year, while men averaged £49,647. Meanwhile, the average age of female team leaders was, at 37, five years younger than that of men leading teams.

Resignations among women also reached a six-year high, and the EOC said that fair-pay cases brought to employment tribunals on the ground of sex discrimination had increased by 155 per cent on last year.

The survey found that bonuses accounted for 14 per cent of men’s salaries, against only 10 per cent of women’s last year. Pay scales in the public sector were blamed for exacerbating wage inequality.

Katja Hall, the CBI’s head of employment, urged the Government to reject EOC calls for businesses to be required to audit pay for gender differences. “The gender pay gap has closed significantly, but too many women still do not reach their full career potential,” she said. “Companies are working hard to ensure that there is equality in the workplace and compulsory pay audits would be time-consuming, expensive and divert attention from more effective measures to tackle inequality.

Marcus Leroux, Times (UK), September 6, 2007

Employers should get used to the age of Facebook and other internet social networks and allow staff to electronically “poke” friends, announce what they are doing that day and join “just for fun” interest groups while at work, the TUC said yesterday.

The union group said that employees should not be able to use the sites without guidance and gave warning that workers who posted items online without thinking risked damaging their reputations and those of their employers.

The TUC called on businesses to set out guidelines for the use of Facebook, other networking sites and social e-mail rather than impose blanket bans. Several big companies have blocked access to the sites, concerned that their staff spend too much time reading news feeds about friends and taking part in other forms of cyberslacking such as online Scrabble.

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, said: “Simply cracking down on the use of new web tools like Facebook is not a sensible solution to a problem that is only going to get bigger. It’s unreasonable for employers to try to stop their staff from having a life outside work, just because they can’t get their heads around the technology.”

The TUC said that although it was wrong for employees to spend hours on Facebook, it was wrong for employers to think that workers could not arrange some of their outside life while still at work.

Britain’s biggest supermarket chain became the latest employer to ban Facebook by blocking access. Tesco said that access was allowed only if employees could make a case for using it for their work.

Katja Hall, CBI’s head of employee relations, said: “The CBI’s advice to companies is that they should have a policy on staff use of the internet during work time, whatever the website.

“It is then down to individual employers how they tackle the increasing use of popular social networking sites…Employers do not want to police the private lives of staff or monitor private conversations.”

Rebecca Clake, research adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said that there were lots of ways that people wasted time at work and that Facebook was just one website.

She said: “It is important not to get carried away with what people are doing every minute of the day. Chatting with colleagues at the water cooler can waste more time than a few minutes on the web.”

Lawyers backed the TUC’s call for guidelines and gave warning that failure to do so exposed businesses to legal claims.

One in five employers admits using such sites to check on a potential new worker’s employability; and in July this year the University of Oxford disciplined several students for breaches of its code of conduct, using pictures from Facebook as evidence.

Chris Boyle, head of employment at Napthens Solicitors, said: “This area is a minefield for employers and employees alike. Many people will put very private and personal information they would not want an employer to know on an internet site where it can be read by anyone.

“But for an employer to use this to make a decision on hiring and firing is not sensible and raises many legal issues, not least of which is privacy.”

He said that it made sense for businesses to have in place strict policies banning the use of such sites at work. “Good policies regarding the use of e-mails and monitoring of internet usage is a must for businesses who wish to take a robust approach.”

Allen & Overy, a law firm in the City, was forced to make an embarrassing u-turn on its Facebook ban earlier this year after a barrage of staff complaints.

The firm, which hires more than 100 graduate trainees in London each year, claimed that it had decided to reinstate access for Facebook because the site had a potential for “business networking”.

But insiders said that the firm was pushed into reversing the ban after complaints that staff were being prevented from keeping in touch with friends and making social arrangements.

Times (UK), August 30, 2007

An employer has been fined £2,500 and £500 costs in the first National Minimum Wage (NMW) criminal prosecution case.

Children’s nursery owner Teresa Aguda pleaded guilty to the charge of obstruction – an offence under the National Minimum Wage Act.

Mrs Aguda had prevented HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) compliance officers from accessing staff records when they were trying to establish whether nursery workers received the NMW.

The judge in the case commented that Mrs Aguda had “demonstrated a clear and deliberate intent to obstruct officers and this was a scandalous breach of the National Minimum Wage legislation”.

HM Revenue and Customs press release, August 28, 2007

More employers are offering their staff the opportunity to work from home, the latest Employment Trends survey from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) shows.

According to the CBI, some 46 per cent of employers say that they offer this type of flexible working, three times higher than last year, when it was 14 per cent.

Welcoming the figures, the CBI said that allowing employees to work from home balanced the demands of work and home, reduced congestion on public transport and benefited the environment.

John Cridland, the deputy director general at the CBI, said that new mobile communications technologies had played a major part in this trend.

“This is good news for all of us, but the Government should not see teleworking as an alternative to putting real investment into improving our creaking transport infrastructure,” he said. “People are still travelling further to work than they did ten years ago.”

Commenting on the CBI figures, Shirley Borrett, director of development for the Telework Association, said: “It’s not just about employees’ rights – teleworking can increase productivity, contribute to retaining skilled staff and can reduce companies’ real estate costs by allowing them to have smaller office buildings.”

Independent, September 10, 2007

Employers will receive a letter during November 2007 informing them of their ‘size’, i.e. how many employees they currently have in a particular PAYE scheme.

The ‘snapshot’ is based on:

• the number of forms P14 filed for tax year 2006/07;
• plus the number of forms P45(3) and P46 received for new starters after April 5 2007;
• less the number of forms P45(1) for leavers after the same date.

If an employer wishes to appeal their ‘size’ they should do this within 30 days of receiving HMRC’s notice.

An employer newly registered for a PAYE scheme during the period April 6 and October 28 is initially treated as a ‘small’ employer (less than 50 employees in a PAYE scheme) until the next ‘snapshot’ is taken in 2008.

The November 2007 letter from HMRC should also be used as an indication of which employers will be required to submit in-year payroll forms online from April 2009, i.e. medium and large employers (with 50 or employees in a PAYE scheme).

HM Revenue and Customs, September 11, 2007

Factory worker fired after turning up for work smelling of alcohol loses unfair dismissal claim Iain Waters, a warehouse operative at United Biscuits McVities factory, was sacked after consuming six to eight small bottles of beer the previous evening at a funeral.

He told the tribunal he had not slept well and was late for work the following morning. He said he had rushed out without freshening up or having breakfast. On arrival at the factory, Angela McCulloch, his line leader, accused him of smelling of drink and banned him from the warehouse area.

He was subsequently sacked for gross misconduct in May last year.

The tribunal heard that Mrs McCulloch accepted he was not drunk or staggering, but she claimed he smelt strongly of alcohol and was red-eyed and tired looking. She felt he was not capable of carrying out his duties in a high-risk area.

Mr Waters denied he was drunk and had offered to give a urine sample to be tested for alcohol but was advised the factory did not have this facility for existing staff, only new-starts.

The Glasgow employment tribunal ruled Mr Waters, was not unfairly dismissed. It said United Biscuits’ policy, that incapability through alcohol would be treated as gross misconduct, was quite clear.

Ian McFatridge, the tribunal chairman, said it may not have come to the same conclusion as United Biscuits did, but the panel could not conclude that the decision to dismiss was outwith the range of responses of a reasonable employer.

Iain Waters v United Biscuits, Glasgow Employment Tribunal, September 4, 2007

A mental health worker whose registration with the General Social Care Council (GSCC) was delayed because of concerns over his HIV-positive status was unlawfully discriminated against under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, an Employment Tribunal has ruled.

The employee underwent training as a social worker at a Yorkshire university having been awarded a scholarship to do so by his employer – a metropolitan district council in the region. On completing the course and applying for registration with the GSCC, however, he was told that concerns had been raised regarding the trustworthiness of his character because he had failed to disclose his HIV-positive status when registering with the university.

The Tribunal noted that such disclosure was not a requirement of university registration and that the employee’s local authority employer had always been aware of his condition. In a reserved judgment, the Tribunal found that the delay in registering the employee with the GSCC had been unacceptable and that to question the employee’s character had been “manifestly unprofessional and wrong”; the GSCC was ordered to pay £2,000 in compensation, plus interest.

The employee’s registration with the GSCC has now been resolved.

Unison press release, August 24, 2007

Several employees of directory inquiries firm 118 118 are facing dismissal after they set up a social networking site on Facebook dedicated to trading insults about customers.

The employees comments, including one who claims to have written customer telephone numbers on the walls of public toilets, could be read by any fellow member of Facebook, which has millions of members.

The employees, now under investigation by 118 118, are the latest in a growing number of employees to be caught out by Facebook.

Many of the social networking sites sub-groups are dedicated to the miseries of members’ workplaces and employers have begun to catch on. A number of firms, including British Gas and Lloyds TSB, have banned staff accessing Facebook from their work computers, claiming employees are wasting time on the site.

Recently, a number of large organisations have pulled advertising from the site concerned that their advertising campaigns are running alongside contentious Facebook pages.

A spokesperson for 118 118 said: “If anyone is proven to have denigrated a customer they will be dismissed immediately.”

One of the founders of the Facebook sub-group ‘I Survived 118 118’ and a former employee defended the group saying it was just “a group created by a few mates to let off a little steam at a job that was plagued by abusive callers and ‘new age management’.”

Daily Telegraph, August 7, 2007

Mr Smith was sacked from his job as a tyre finisher at a Michelin factory in Dundee in December 2006, an employment tribunal heard in June 2007.

The factory became smoke-free when the Scottish Executive’s smoking ban in public places came into effect in March 2006.

Smoking was allowed in designated sites outside fitted with canopies and ashtrays, but Mr Smith was caught in a locker room, smoking beside an open fire door, which had a “no smoking” sign hung on the back of it.

In a written judgment, the tribunal noted that if Mr Smith had walked “just an

inch or so beyond the door” and smoked outside, then he would not have been breaching the company’s policy.

Mr Smith gave evidence describing his smoking as an addiction and argued that he had been under pressure and was feeling depressed after working 12–hour shifts. He said he had lit a cigarette without thinking. Mr Smith’s solicitor said the dismissal had been “too savage” because of Mr Smith’s 12-year service.

The tribunal acknowledged that the dismissal had had a “devastating” impact, but ruled that it had not been unfair when weighed against the importance that his employers placed on “preserving their business, their property and, more importantly, the lives of their other staff”.

The Scotsman, August 4, 2007