Labour Research December 2000

Features: Law matters

Discrimination guidance

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has recently given guidance on how tribunals should deal with cases where an employee commits a discriminatory act for which the employer could be liable because it happens in work.

The guidance says that tribunals must identify whether the employer took any steps to prevent the discrimination and then must go on to see if there was anything else that he or she could have done. It is not enough for the employer to argue that even if further steps had been taken, the discriminatory action would still have happened and that therefore there was no need to take the further steps.