Working hours and work organisation 




Working hours, and changes to work arrangements, can impact unfavourably on workers with protected characteristics. 




in the context of religious observance, special rules on Sunday working under the Sunday Trading Act 1994 protect some retail and betting shop workers (see Chapter 4: Working Hours). For other workers, Sunday working is normally a matter for the employment contract. However, employers also need to be careful to avoid religious discrimination.


In Mba v the Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Merton [2013] EWCA Civ 1562, the Court of Appeal accepted that a practice of requiring work on Sundays can discriminate indirectly against Christians who want to “keep Sunday special”, but went on to find that the practice could be justified in that case. When assessing proportionality, an employer is allowed to consider the needs of other staff for time off, and the fact that regularly allowing the same worker to take Sundays off makes it harder for other workers to plan holidays and weekend breaks, and leads to increased costs through greater reliance on agency staff. 




Acting proportionately can include implementing practical measures in the workplace to accommodate workers’ needs for religious observance, such as prayer mats and prayer rooms (Cherfi v G4S Security Services Limited [2011] UKEAT 0379/11/2405).

Rules and practices on working hours and work organisation can also lead to claims of sex and/or pregnancy discrimination. Many successful cases have involved requests for adjustments to working hours and working patterns by female workers with care responsibilities. Here are some examples:

• in Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Constabulary v Chew [2001] UKEAT/503/00/2809, it was held that given the size of the workplace and the fact that the proportion of women was quite small, a refusal to accommodate requests for a part-time working pattern that did not involve weekend working was indirect sex discrimination; 




• paying a bonus in return for agreement to work different shifts, from a five-day week to a seven-day continental 3-2-2 shift pattern (“disturbance payments”) only to a group of mainly male workers, on the basis that the women were less determined than the men to challenge the new shift arrangements was sex discrimination (MFI v Bradley and others [2003] UKEAT 1125/02/2107); 




• insisting on office-based and full-time working and refusing a woman’s request to work from home due to difficulties with childcare was sex discrimination (Lockwood v Crawley Warren Group [2000] UKEAT 1176/99/2806);




• denying those absent on maternity leave a discretionary loyalty bonus designed to reward an “orderly and effective” relocation from one office to another was sex discrimination (GUS Home Shopping Limited v Green & Another ([2000] UKEAT 994/99/2709); 




• introducing a new shift pattern that imposes unsocial hours on a female worker with a young child can be indirect sex discrimination (London Underground v Edwards [1995] IRLR 355); 




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




• failing to notify employees on a career break of the availability of voluntary redundancy was sex discrimination, where the evidence showed that women take proportionately longer career breaks than men (HM Land Registry v Benson [2011] UKEAT/0197/11);


• a requirement in a job profile for extra work to be done at work after 5pm was indirect sex discrimination because the relevant tasks could have been done remotely from home. In the same case, requiring a woman to stay at work beyond her contractually agreed finishing time of 5pm (fixed following a flexible working request) was less favourable treatment due to part-time status (Fidessa PLC v Lancaster [2017] UKEAT/0093/16/LA); and


• failure to carry out an adequate risk assessment on a mother who intends to breastfeed on returning to work is sex discrimination (Otero Ramos v Servicio Galego de Saude [2017] CJEU C-531/15). See also Chapter 4: Breastfeeding at work, page 106.