In this month's Employment Matters, we cover three interesting cases.
Two are EAT decisions concerning discrimination, one on whether a claimant should be granted anonymity to protect his identity and the other on how compensation should be calculated – and in particular in what circumstances it can and cannot be reduced.
The third case is a Court of Appeal decision which emphasises the importance, for the purposes of defending an unfair dismissal claim, of clearly identifying – in policies or via training – behaviours that may constitute gross misconduct.
Moving away from case law, we outline the legislative changes which are coming into force this month and also look at what is shown in the most recent employment tribunal statistics.
As flagged in our previous alert, the FCA and PRA announced last month that they will not be taking forward proposed rules aimed at improving diversity and inclusion in regulated firms, and the FCA published an update on its plans for transparency of enforcement investigations, and non-financial misconduct.
Finally, on the topic of immigration, employers will also be interested to read about both the upcoming changes to the skilled worker route, which could have a significant impact on employers who recruit from abroad, covered in our earlier alert, and the recent Home Office announcement that employers will soon be required to conduct right to work checks on gig economy and zero-hours workers, which we covered here.
Disability discrimination: EAT grants anonymity to protect autistic claimant's identity given his reasonable fears about future employability were his disability to be made public
In this case, the EAT held that an employment tribunal ought to have granted the claimant anonymity in his disability discrimination claims.
Unfair dismissal: Court of Appeal upholds EAT decision that dismissal for physical contact with a child was unfair
In this case, the Court of Appeal held that an employment tribunal was wrong to find that a school inspector’s summary dismissal for touching a pupil's shoulder and brushing rainwater off his forehead during a school visit was fair.
Discrimination: employment tribunal wrongly reduced compensation where the employer's unlawful actions caused an employee to become permanently unfit for work
In this case, the EAT held that where an employer's discriminatory conduct had caused an employee to suffer a severe depressive episode that made him permanently unfit for work, the employment tribunal was wrong to reduce the employee's compensation on the basis that he might have been lawfully dismissed at a later date or taken ill-health early retirement due to another illness.
Government launches consultation on ethnicity and disability pay reporting
The government has launched a consultation on the introduction of mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for large employers.
Employment legislation update
We outline the changes to legislation which are coming into force this April.
Employment tribunals: statistics published for October to December 2024
Statistics relating to the employment tribunals have recently been released for the Quarter, October - December 2024, which provide a snapshot of the number and types of cases that have been dealt with in the employment tribunals during this period.
