In X v Citizens Advice Bureau, X signed a volunteer agreement to work four to five hours a week for a Citizens Advice Bureau. The volunteer agreement specifically stated that it was “not an employment contract or legally binding”. The CAB subsequently asked the volunteer to stop working for the organisation. She claimed that this was disability discrimination.
To the great joy of the Daily Mail, in the much publicised case of Eweida and Ors v UK, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Nadia Eweida, a practising Christian and British Airways check in worker should not have been prevented by BA from wearing a visible plain silver cross necklace. Whilst the European Court agreed that BA’s aim to promote their corporate image was reasonable, there was no evidence that employees wearing religious items had a detrimental impact on that image. The European Court decided that there had been a breach of Ms Eweida’s right to manifest her religion. The fact that BA subsequently amended their uniform policy demonstrated that the earlier prohibition was not very important.
In Optimum Group Services Plc v Muir, Optimum lost a key contract. They thought Mr Muir’s employment should transfer to the new providers, Beaumont, under TUPE. The new providers denied this and said that Mr Muir was redundant and should claim payments from Optimum. Mr Muir ended up with no job and no redundancy payment so sued both Optimum and Beaumont. Mr Muir reached a settlement with Beaumont before the hearing where they agreed to pay him £20,000. He continued his claim against Optimum and won. The Tribunal found that Mr Muir had been unfairly dismissed by Optimum. In calculating the compensatory award for unfair dismissal, it decided not to deduct the £20,000 settlement payment from Beaumont because to do so would give Optimum, who had behaved badly, a ‘windfall benefit’. The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the first tribunal had got it wrong. A Tribunal, when calculating compensation for unfair dismissal, should only consider what actual financial loss was suffered by a claimant as a consequence of dismissal. The Tribunal cannot enable a claimant to profit financially irrespective of the circumstances. The Tribunal also erred when it sought to penalise Optimum for its behaviour towards Mr Muir.
Probably the most radical reform proposed by the Government is the new ‘employee owner’ status, whereby employees will forfeit major employment rights (like unfair dismissal) in exchange for employees being given shares in their employer worth £2,000 or more. These shares will be sold back to the employer for a reasonable price and up to £50,000 worth of shares will be exempt from Capital Gains Tax (CGT) at the point of sale. This is due to come into force in April 2013.
In Wincanton v Stone, Mr Stone was employed as a driver for Wincanton. In 2009, Mr Stone received a first written warning for being insubordinate. In 2010, Mr Stone breached Wincanton’s health and safety rules when he pulled out of a loading bay when the light was red. This was not an act of insubordination but carelessness. Wincanton dismissed Mr Stone on the basis that the earlier warning “tipped the balance” in favour of dismissal, even though the two warnings were for very different types of conduct.
In X v Citizens Advice Bureau, X signed a volunteer agreement to work four to five hours a week for a Citizens Advice Bureau. The volunteer agreement specifically stated that it was “not an employment contract of employment or legally binding”. The CAB subsequently asked the volunteer to stop working for the organisation. She claimed that this was disability discrimination.
In Smith v Trafford Housing Trust, Mr Smith posted a link on his Facebook wall to a BBC news article entitled “Gay church marriages set to get the go-ahead” and commented that it was “an equality too far”. In response, his colleague posted a comment on his wall, “Does this mean you don’t approve?”
In Optimum Group Services Plc v Muir, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that a Tribunal should have deducted a settlement payment received by the claimant from another employer when calculating the award, in accordance with the principle that the same loss cannot be recovered twice.
In December 2012, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills published its response to a consultation on how to implement the new ‘employee owner’ scheme, whereby employees will forfeit major employment rights in exchange for taking a stake in their business.. This is an unusually fast response from the Government who only announced the scheme at the conservative party conference in October 2012.
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