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Employment  Memo 2007 Newsletter Issue 2

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Training and performance

Training

Discrimination

¶6340 An employer may not discriminate on the grounds of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, or religion or belief in offering employees an opportunity to undergo training. In this case, the EAT considered an applicant to the Government Legal Service (GLS)’s vacation placement scheme, a ten-day course, during which students are placed as legal trainees on work experience with the GLS. The applicant was unsuccessful with an application and brought a claim of race discrimination. The GLS argued that their scheme should not be included within the definition of training, as it did not have a syllabus and there was no direct instruction or feedback. The EAT disagreed, finding that the vacation placement scheme was training for these purposes.

Treasury Solicitor’s Department v Chenge [2007] IRLR 386, EAT

 

Discipline and grievance

Grievance procedures

Whether complaint contained within grievance

¶6773 In respect of complaints covered by the statutory dispute resolution procedures (¶9986), an employee cannot start tribunal proceedings in respect of the subject of his grievance unless the employee has first raised a grievance in writing under Step 1 of the applicable statutory procedure. Disability discrimination cases are among the group to which the statutory dispute resolution procedures apply.

In this EAT case, a disabled employee had been absent from work on long-term sickness, and had, during the period of his employment, complained about the employer’s delay in finding alternative work for him. Subsequent to the issuing of the letter of grievance, further acts and omissions had taken place. On appeal, the employer argued that the proper action would have been for the employee to issue renewed grievances subsequent to each act of which he wished to complain. Since the employee had not raised the further acts in any grievance letter, they could not be the subject of any action.

The EAT rejected the employer’s argument. Where a grievance complains of an act or omission, which is in reality a continuing act or omission, and where subsequent events occur without changing the substance of what is essentially the same complaint, then even where an employee fails to submit a new grievance the employee is not barred from bringing a claim.

Smith v Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd [2007] EAT case 0047/07