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. 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.