In Science Warehouse Limited v Mills the EAT held that a Claimant did not need to go through the early conciliation process in respect of adding a victimisation claim by way of amending her existing claims of pregnancy/maternity discrimination. Amending the existing proceedings is within the case management powers of the Tribunal’s case management and the Tribunal is not required to refuse to add a claim in respect of which the early conciliation procedure had not been observed.

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In Ebrahimian v France, the European Court of Human Rights has held that a hospital worker whose contract was not renewed after she refused to remove a head scarf which she wore for religious reasons at work, did not have her right to religious freedom under article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights breached. The European Court held that the principle of secularism and the neutrality of public services justified the interference with her right to manifest her religious belief.

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It is well known that the service provision changes under TUPE do not apply to tasks of short term duration. The case of ICTS UK Limited v Mahdi and others considered just this point in the EAT i.e. what constituted a task of short term duration.

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The Department for Business Innovation and Skills brought a case against 3 ex directors of City Link under TULR(C)A for failing to give sufficient notice of redundancies. The case failed. As is well known, where employers plan to dismiss 100 or more staff at one location they must notify the Secretary of State 90 days in advance and a failure to do so may bring a fine of up to £5,000 (at the relevant time – the fine is now unlimited).

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In Stephens v University of Birmingham the High Court has ruled that it was a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence by the employer in refusing the employee the right to be accompanied by a representative of their choice for the purposes of attending an investigatory meeting which could lead to disciplinary action.

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Yet another case has been decided on what constitutes working time for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage where someone is on night duty.

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In Underwood v Wincanton Plc the EAT has considered the circumstances in which a public interest disclosure satisfies the public interest test introduced in 2013 by section 43B of the Employment Rights Act. The purpose of introducing the public interest test was to move away from incidences of employees or workers successfully claiming that breaches of their own employment contract, which was something specific to them, was a breach of a legal obligation and thus passing the protected disclosure test. After the EAT’s recent decision in Chesterton Global Limited and another v Nurmohamed (which is itself being appealed to the Court of Appeal) it appears this test is being ever more swiftly dumbed down.

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In a case which has been running for many years, USA v Nolan, the Supreme Court has ruled that the collective redundancy consultation obligations under section 188 of TULR(C)A applied to dismissals which resulted from the closure of a US military base in the UK. Although the ECJ has ruled that the EU Collective Redundancies Directive does not apply to workers of public administrative bodies, such as the civilian employees affected in this case, this was no reason to read an exemption into the clear provisions of TULR(C)A.

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In Trustees of Swansea University Pension and Assurance Scheme and Anor v Williams the EAT has for the first time examined the meaning of the word, “unfavourably” in section 15 of the Equality Act relating to discrimination arising from disability. This section provides that discrimination arising from disability will occur where one person treats another unfavourably because of “something arising in consequence of [that person’s] disability” and the treatment cannot be shown to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

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In Services for Education S4E Limited v White and anor the EAT has considered the continuity of employment and the date of a TUPE transfer for the purposes of determining whether the individual was unfairly dismissed contrary to TUPE.

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The case of Willis Limited v Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group Plc is a relatively rare case of a team move situation reaching the Court of Appeal. The appeal was successful.

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In NHS Direct NHS Trust v Gunn the EAT has considered the interrelationship between disability discrimination and TUPE. 

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