CABLE: Current Awareness Bulletin - March 2018

Clyde & Co's UK employment team brings you CABLE, a bulletin keeping you up to date with recent legal developments

Pregnancy discrimination

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has decided that an employer is not required to revisit or revoke a lawful decision to dismiss after it is notified of an employee's pregnancy, where it was not aware of the pregnancy at the time it made the decision to dismiss.

The employer decided to dismiss Ms Thompson during her probationary period because of her emotional volatility and because she did not fit in with their work ethic. The employer did not tell her this straight away and before they did, she told them that she was pregnant. The employer went ahead with Mr Thompson's dismissal. She brought claims for unfair dismissal by reason of pregnancy and pregnancy discrimination.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal decided that in order for the Claimant to be successful in her claims, the employer must have known, or believed, that she was pregnant when it made the decision to dismiss. Given that the Employment Tribunal had accepted that the employer made its decision to dismiss before Ms Thompson notified it of her pregnancy and was unrelated to them, Ms Thompson had not been unfairly dismissed or discriminated against by reason of her pregnancy.

Really Easy Car Credit Ltd v Thompson UKEAT/0197/17

PRACTICAL POINT This case provides useful clarification for employers that there is no positive obligation to revisit or overturn a decision to dismiss made before it had knowledge of an employee's pregnancy. Failure to make reasonable adjustments and constructive dismissal: expectation that employee works long hours was a PCP

The Court of Appeal has confirmed that the expectation (rather than actual coersion) for a disabled employee to work long hours amounted to a "provision, criterion or practice", potentially triggering the employer's duty to make reasonable adjustments to remove the (substantial) disadvantage faced by that employee when compared to non-disabled employees.

An employer has a duty to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled employee where there is a "provision, criterion or practice" (PCP) which puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage compared with a non-disabled person.

Mr Carreras was an analyst for United First Partnership Research, a brokerage firm, when he was involved in a serious road accident whilst on his bicycle. He returned to work suffering with headaches, dizziness, difficulty...