Redundancy and sex discrimination against male employee
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25.6.2010 In De Belin v Eversheds Legal Services Ltd, it was held that a male employee had been discriminated against on the grounds of sex as a result of a redundancy scoring matrix. The respondent had inflated the score of the claimant’s female colleague in relation to the time it took to receive fees for a given piece of work, even though the female employee was on maternity leave throughout the relevant period. A redundancy pool of two was chosen and a scoring matrix devised. The claimant had received a score of 0.5 in the “lock-up” category (the number of days between work conducted and work billed), with the female employee being awarded a notional score of 2, as no lock-up figure was available for her due to her absence on maternity leave. The claimant’s overall score in the exercise was 27 with the female employee scoring 27.5 and, because his score was lower, the claimant was made redundant. The tribunal held that inflating the female employee’s score amounted to less favourable treatment on the grounds of sex, and that the claimant had been discriminated against and unfairly dismissed. The employer’s scoring system was flawed and a different period could have been used in assessing the candidates’ lock-up. Alternatively, the category of the scoring matrix could have been removed altogether as it could not be applied properly to the situation. The respondent attempted to rely on Section 2(2) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (“SDA”), which qualifies the prohibition from less favourably treatment found in Section 1(1)(a) of the SDA. Section 2(2) provides that “no account shall be taken of a special treatment afforded to women in connection with pregnancy or childbirth” when applying the Section 1(1)(a) prohibition. However, the tribunal found that the employer could not rely on this qualification as it could not be interpreted to provide women with blanket special treatment. Practical tip If you or a client are considering or making redundancies, ensure that you check the scoring mechanisms which are being used if someone in the “pool” is on maternity leave. It is no longer permissible to provide women with blanket special treatment if connected with pregnancy or childbirth.
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