Two female employees shared a job in the civil service during which time they each moved up one point in the incremental pay scale with each year of service and were paid fifty percent of the salary for clerical assistants. After two years they switched to full-time employment but their position on the incremental pay scale was adjusted in accordance with an instruction that each year’s job-sharing service was only reckonable as six months full-time service. The issue for the ECJ was whether the principle of finally equal pay was contravened, if employees who convert from job-sharing to full-time work regress on the incremental scale, and hence on their salary scale due to the application by the employer of the criteria of service calculated by time worked in a job and, if so, did the employer have to provide special set of classification for re-course to the criterion of service to find his actual time worked in awarding incremental credit.
Held: Treatment of job sharers as having acquired seniority of half that of time served (having worked half time) was discriminatory. 98% of job sharing civil servant employees were women. Otherwise only if difference based on objective non-sex related factors.
Citations:
Gazette 09-Sep-1998, C-243/95, Ecj/Cfi Bulletin, 9, [1998] IRLR 466, [1998] EUECJ C-243/95
Links:
Statutes:
Council Directive 75/117/EEC Equal Pay Directive
Cited by:
Cited – Sharp v Caledonia Group Services Ltd EAT 1-Nov-2005
EAT Equal Pay Act – Material factor defence – In an equal pay claim involving a presumption of direct discrimination the genuine material factor defence requires justification by objective criteria.
The . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Discrimination, European, European
Updated: 03 June 2022; Ref: scu.161632