Labour Research September 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 at work for which the employer could be liable. It

says that tribunals have to consider two things. First they have to

identify whether the employer took any steps to prevent the

discrimination and then they have to see if there was anything else that

the employer could have done. It is not enough for the employer to argue

that further steps would not have prevented the discriminatory action.