EQUAL PAY VICTORY
The House of Lords has just ruled in favour of 36 school dinner ladies who claimed they were victimised by St Helens Borough Council in Merseyside after they brought equal pay claims against the local authority. The women’s fight for justice was backed throughout by their trade union the GMB who instructed Thompsons to act on their behalf.
In a damning verdict, the five law lords unanimously backed the women in their claims against the council for sex discrimination and victimisation. The result means that a tribunal will now assess the award due to the women which could be up to £10,000 each.
The women, along with 473 others, claimed equal pay with male road sweepers in 1998. The majority accepted the terms of a settlement offered by the council but the remainder took their claim to an employment tribunal and won. The tribunal awarded them £560,000.
Just two months before their claims were to be heard a senior council official sent two letters, one to the women and the other to all the catering staff, claiming that if they continued their claims and were successful, there would be “a severe impact on all staff”. It was, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury said, “effectively a threat”. The letter warned of redundancies and said there was a danger that the claimants might deprive children of school dinners.
The letter sent to all catering staff resulted in, according to Lord Hope of Craighead, “some odium” for the claimants from colleagues, who feared for their jobs and their ability to pay for their children’s lunches. This was, the Law Lords said, “a classic case of blaming the victims”.
The Lords said that the original tribunal had been right to conclude that the women had been victimised. They said the letter was “intimidating” and that the indirect threat it contained was just as likely to deter an employee from enforcing her claim as a direct one.
Noting that equal pay claimants are “particularly vulnerable to reproach”, the Lords said that “however anxious the employers may be to settle, they should not exploit that vulnerability in their attempts to do so”.