“I’m pregnant”.
“Don’t bother to come back in!”

This is what happened to one of our clients. Even though there has been statutory protection against dismissal on grounds of pregnancy since the 1970’s, the employer in our case appears to think that the law does not apply to them. Which, in this day of squeezed profit and loss accounts, is not clever.

Even though our Con-Dem Government want to do all they can to dump claims of this sort into the general category of “the compensation culture” – they want employers to be free from “red tape”, free from the “enemies of enterprise” – unless they actually unwind the huge mountain of employee protection legislation, more or less back to the real old master/servant days, their futile rhetoric will be just that, futile self-serving spin.

Which brings me to the Equality Act 2010. The inescapable new law. The New Commandment handed down like a tablet of stone by the remnants of New Labour at the tail end of their not-quite-Modernist not-quite-Revolution.

Sections 17 and 18 of the Equality Act 2010 are the new incarnations of the statutory provision protecting woman against discrimination on grounds of pregnancy and/or maternity.

Given the endless stream of attacks by the Con-Dem coalition on lawyers and “the compensation culture” why are they implementing the Equality Act 2010 at all? Lack of foresight, is my guess. Although, I suspect also they may be happy to have a hostage to fortune.

By that I mean, it may well suit the Con-Dems to be able to argue against the philosophy of New Labour: “look at all the namby-pamby politically correct anti-enterprise stuff in the Equality Act 2010”. A kind of counter-spin against New Labour. The reality being that however much the Con-Dems backwoodsmen find the Equality Act unpalatable, it does seem perhaps inevitable that it fits into our modern society. So however reactionary they may be, they can’t really prevent it becoming law.

If the Con-Dems really want to undermine discrimination claims, they’ll have to do something drastic. This is because, unlike unfair dismissal claims where there is a 12 month qualifying period, for discrimination claims there is NO QUALIFYING PERIOD.

This means that if an employer rejects a job applicant (yes an applicant, not an employee) on the grounds of her pregnancy (for instance), even though the employer has never employed the applicant, she may be able to make a claim!

What the Equality Act 2010 has done is to wave a huge flag which asks: are you the subject of discrimination?

This matters to lawyers and potential claimants who will ask themselves this same question. Especially, if Cameron increases the qualifying period for unfair dismissal to 2 years – a policy he has trailed in the media as a way of reducing the hugely increased number of claims being issued in Employment Tribunals.

Interestingly, Cameron and his cronies appear to be entirely ignorant of the very simple and obvious relationship between recession and dismissals, and therefore, been recession and unfair dismissal claims.

Article posted on Monday, March, 14th, 2011 at 12:48 pm

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