In this case there was insufficient consideration of the latter two conditions (for example whether a lesser sanction was appropriate), and the matter was remitted back to a different employment Judge.
REDUNDANCY AND PARENTAL LEAVE
21 June 2013
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has been considering whether, when selecting for redundancy, can an employer assess workers who have been off work on parental leave on different criteria to those who have not been on leave?
No, says the CJEU in a preliminary ruling in the case of Riezniece v Zemkopības Ministrija .
According to the CJEU, where it is the case that a much higher number of women than men take parental leave, EU law precludes:
1) the assessment of workers in their absence, for the purpose of abolishing posts, on the basis of criteria less favourable than that applied to workers who did not take parental leave. Any such assessment must encompass all workers liable to be concerned by the abolition of the post and must be based on criteria which are absolutely identical to those applying to workers in active service. The implementation of those criteria should not involve the physical presence of workers; and 2) the dismissal of a female worker who has been transferred to another post at the end of her parental leave following that assessment, where it was not impossible for the employer to allow her to return to her former post or where the work assigned to her was not equivalent or similar and consistent with her post because, at the time of the transfer, the employer knew that the new post was due to be abolished.
THE SUPREME COURT RULES ON THE MEANING OF ‘IN THE SAME EMPLOYMENT’
28 June 2013
The requirement that comparators be in the same employment in Equal Pay cases has been considered and ruled upon recently by the Supreme Court.
The judgment of the Supreme Court in North & Ors v Dumfries and Galloway overturns the earlier decision, that equal pay law which allows a woman to compare herself with a man “in the same employment” does apply, even though the women worked at different ‘establishments’. Unison had appealed after the Court of Session said the 251 classroom assistants, support for learning assistants and nursery nurses in Dumfries were not able to compare themselves with groundsmen, refuse collectors and drivers and leisure attendants who received bonuses, but were based at depots, not in the women’s schools. This ruling will impact on nearly two thousand women members of UNISON as this ruling provides a conclusive win for them following the long-running defence by Scottish councils of paying men discriminatory bonuses that are denied to women. The UNISON members can expect to share in an estimated £12 million in lost pay after the Supreme Court today handed down judgment in their favour in the seven-year case of North & Others v Dumfries and Galloway Council. Having conceded that council bonuses were discriminatory, more than 20 Scottish councils joined Dumfries in arguing that women should only get equal pay compensation if they worked at the same location as their male comparators.
CIPP Policy News Journal
16/04/2014, Page 105 of 519
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