Access to promotion and job changes

Employers must ensure employees have equal access to jobs once in the workplace, including access to promotion.

A practice that makes it more difficult for a member of a protected group to apply will be unlawful indirect discrimination unless it can be objectively justified. For a recent example, see Homer v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2012] UKSC 15, discussed on page 160. In this case, a new requirement for all senior police legal advisers to hold a law degree discriminated against a police officer who was close to retirement age and would not have enough working years left in which to acquire the degree.

Many successful cases have involved female workers with care responsibilities. Examples include:

• refusing a request to transfer to part-time work. In Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset v Chew EAT/503/00, it was held that taking into account the overall size of the workplace and the fact that the proportion of women was already quite small, the employer’s refusal to accommodate a request for part-time work was indirect sex discrimination;

• offering a bonus in return for agreement to work different shifts only to a group of predominantly male workers, on the basis that the women were less determined than the men to challenge the new shift arrangements (MFI v Bradley and others EAT/1125/02);

• refusing a woman’s request to work from home due to difficulties with childcare (Lockwood v Crawley Warren Group EAT/1176/99);

• introducing a new shift pattern which meant that a female worker with a young child would have had to work unsocial hours (London Underground v Edwards [1995] IRLR 355); and

• imposing a mobility clause in circumstances where fewer women could comply with the requirement (Meade-Hill v British Council [1995] IRLR 478).

As with all indirect discrimination, employers can defeat a claim if they can provide justifiable and non-discriminatory reasons for the decision, backed up by persuasive evidence (see Indirect discrimination, page 160).