Working hours and work organisation 





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





Regarding Sunday working, special rules 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 but employers must take care to avoid religious discrimination. When considering requests for time off for religious observance, the employer can consider the needs of other staff for time off. For example, always allowing the same worker time off on Sundays can make it harder for others to plan holidays and weekend breaks and ior lead to increased costs through use of agency staff (see Mba v the Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Merton [2013] EWCA Civ 1562). 





An employer can avoid engaging in religious discrimination through the use of practical measures such as making available prayer mats and prayer rooms (Cherfi v G4S Security Services Limited [2011] UKEAT 0379/11/2405).


Rules on working hours and work organisation can also result in disability discrimination, triggering the employer’s duty to make reasonable adjustments. For some examples, see page 243: Reasonable adjustments. 


Rules and practices on working hours and work organisation can 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 caring 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 by female police offficers for a part-time working pattern that did not involve weekend working was indirect sex discrimination; 





• refusing to agree to a job share for a woman returning from maternity leave was sex discrimination in Hardys & Hansons PLC v Lax [2005] IRLR 726; 


• 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 because the women were less likely 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 women 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 where the tasks could have been done remotely from home. In the same case, requiring a woman to 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



• failing 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 Chapter 9 for information on challenges to shared parental leave and pay based on sex discrimination.