A rather interesting concept was dealt with recently by the Supreme Court via the case ofWest London Mental Health NHS Trust v Chhabra. The question before the Court was whether it could intervene to restrain an employer from requiring an employee to face allegations of gross misconduct at a disciplinary hearing if the conduct complained of is not sufficiently serious so as to support such a finding of misconduct.
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Here you will find all the latest news from the SCE team. In this section we will feature news about what we have been up to, recent mentions in the press, information about the work we do in the community and lots more.
Monthly Archive January 2014
Religious Discrimination: divide between ‘manifesting and ‘holding’ beliefs
Religious discussions, of whatever shade, are always a delicate and generally best avoided topic in the workplace. There is however obviously a need to ensure that workers are free to have their beliefs or lack thereof and that the relevant employer takes no umbrage at this fact. Naturally when a clash of ideologies occurs in the workplace, the employee is protected by virtue of religion and belief discrimination provisions of the Equality Act 2010.
Read MoreDisability Discrimination: Employer Knowledge of Disability
An employer’s duty to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled employee only arises where the employer knows, or is reasonable expected to know, that the relevant employee is suffering from a disability, and so as a result is likely to be placed at a substantial disadvantage.
However establishing such knowledge on the part of the employer is not always a clear cut exercise. A question posed recently to the Court of Appeal (“CA”) in the case of Gallop v Newport City Councilconcerned whether or not an employer could rely solely on an Occupational Health Report in deciding whether an employee is disabled.
Read MoreEmployment Status: Labels not everything!
In everyday life we generally seek to place labels on items which correspond simply to the function or description of those objects, for example in an office kitchen, the labelling of a tub of sugar so as to avoid the making of a round of cuppas with salt in them.
In employment law however, the labels placed on certain work relationships can often be inaccurate and wholly misleading, even where clarity and certainty were the guiding intentions of those seeking to apply those labels. There is no area where this statement is more accurate than that of determining the employment status of the individual.
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