EAT RELIGION OR BELIEF DISCRIMINATION
A care worker in a Children’s home was employed under a contract under which she could be required to work on Sundays. After accommodating her wish as a Christian not to do so for some two years, her employer required her to work as contractually obliged. She argued that this provision or practice discriminated against Christians, and hence her, on grounds of religion or belief. An Employment Tribunal decided that the employer’s aim in seeking to ensure that all full-time staff worked on Sundays in rotation was legitimate, and was objectively justified, so that she could lawfully be required to do so.
Three grounds of appeal were raised – that the Tribunal adopted the wrong approach, though espousing the correct one; that the employer should have been proactive, not reactive, in considering possible alternatives which would have avoided the Claimant having to work on Sundays; and that the Tribunal had impermissibly taken into account a view of what was ‘core’ to Christian belief, which was not part of its proper function.
Held: the decision could not be said to be perverse; the Tribunal had applied the necessary anxious scrutiny, and judgment of whether the existence of alternatives rendered a policy or practice disproportionately discriminatory in its effect was one for the Tribunal and not the employer; and by using the expression ‘core’ the Tribunal intended to reflect the evidence put before it from an Anglican bishop that only some Christians felt obliged to abstain from Sunday work – it was thus permissibly commenting on the degree to which Christians numerically would be affected, and not attempting to tell them what was important in their faith. Appeal dismissed.
Langstaff J P
[2012] UKEAT 0332 – 12 – 1312
Bailii
England and Wales
Employment, Discrimination
Leading Case
Updated: 09 November 2021; Ref: scu.468965