Employment Law Case Update

Redundancy scoring favouring employee on maternity leave confirmed as sex discrimination against male colleague

The EAT has agreed with the tribunal in Eversheds v De Belin that a male employee had been discriminated against when his employer gave a female colleague on maternity leave a notional maximum score in a matrix which resulted in him being selected for redundancy rather than her. The EAT held that although employees who are pregnant or on maternity leave sometimes need to be treated more favourably than their colleagues, this protection does not extend to favouring them beyond what is necessary to compensate them for disadvantages from their condition. Employers should ensure that scoring in these circumstances is done as far as possible on objective criteria which can actually be measured.