Harrods Ltd v Remick & others [1997] IRLR 583 CA and [1997] 9

The Court of Appeal has comprehensively rejected arguments that an Industrial Tribunal had no jurisdiction to hear race discrimination complaints against Harrods because the workers involved were not directly employed by the store. The Employment Appeal Tribunal had previously dismissed an appeal by Harrods on the same point.

Harrods argued that employees of concessionaries at the store were not their employees and so could not bring claims against it for unlawful race discrimination.

Although the detail of the claims differed, three individual claims concerned the conditions Harrods placed on the employees of concessionaries in the store.

In all the cases the store withdrew permission for the Applicants to work at Harrods. The cases concerned a black woman who, while working for Schaeffer Pens Limited, allegedly did not comply with the Harrods dress code, an Asian cosmetic consultant who was sacked by Brigade International for wearing a nose ring she had worn since being a child, and a black woman who was not employed by a florist concessionary at Harrods' behest.

None of these Applicants had ever worked directly for Harrods, but their complaints arose out of the manner in which Harrods organises sale of goods and exercises power to control individuals who staffed the store. The Applicants contended that Section 7 of the Race Relations Act 1976 covered the concessionary arrangement. They said Section 7 "applies to any work for a person (the principal) which is available for doing by individuals (contract workers) who are employed not by the principal himself but by another person, who supplied them under a contract made with the principal".

  • The Section goes on to make it unlawful for the principal - in this case Harrods - to discriminate against a contract worker:

    in the terms on which he allows him to do that work; or
    by not allowing him to do it or continue to do it; or
    in the way he affords him access to any benefits, facilities or services or by refusing or deliberately omitting to afford him access to them; or
    by subjecting him to any other detriment.

 

Harrods argued the Race Relations Act did not apply to this concessionary arrangement. They argued that the concept of "work for ... the principal" required that those doing the work should be under the managerial power or control of Harrods. They argued it was not enough that the work was for the benefit of Harrods.

The Court of Appeal could not accept these submissions. Sir Richard Scott, Vice Chancellor, said: "If... [Harrods] approach to the construction of Section 7 is right, these ladies will be the victims of injustice without redress. The legislation will have failed to achieve the purpose set for it".

He went on to comment that the Act was brought in to remedy a very great evil. The Act was expressed in very wide terms and that the Courts would be slow to find the effect of something which is humiliatingly discriminatory in racial matters falls outside the ambit of the Act.

Therefore staff employed by concessionaries at Harrods were contract workers who worked for Harrods within the meaning of Section 7 of the Race Relations Act. They were protected from being discriminated against by Harrods.

Had the Court of Appeal not upheld the EAT judgment, it would have opened the door to unscrupulous employment practices giving employers carte blanche to discriminate against contract workers not directly employed by them. Any other decision would clearly to be a one way street where arms-length employers could carry on whatever discriminatory practices they desired with no possibility of individual redress.

It is highly unfortunate that not all employment protection does extend to contract workers who often fall through the net being on short term casual contracts. It is encouraging that the Labour government is committed to dealing with abuses of employment status and has made special provision in the National Minimum Wage Bill for agency and homeworkers.