Indirect sex discrimination

Our employer has transferred a group of catering staff who are all women from weekly to monthly pay. Other weekly paid workers were not transferred and the union was told that they would not be. We told management that this amounted to sex discrimination. Can we do anything about this?

If you are trying to show that the change is indirectly discriminatory there is a recent Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) ruling which may be of use. There the EAT ruled that paying a bonus to proportionately more men than women was likely to amount to discrimination. It held this to be the case if the reason for the different treatment was to do with the fact that, in the view of the employer, proportionately more women would have been agreeable to the change or at least would not have resisted it strongly.

* More information: MFI UK v Bradley and others EAT/1125/02