Length of Service and Equal Pay / Maternity Leave and Continuing Obligations (Updates)

Men tend to have longer service than women. Pay scales which reward length of service will therefore tend to benefit men more than women. One of the surprising features of the recent case of HSE v Cadman is that this is apparently the first case in which that proposition has been challenged under the Equal Pay legislation, at least at appeal level. Ms Cadman was paid between £4,000 and £9,000 less than her longer serving male comparators in the same grade, doing the same job. It was accepted that the pay structure, with increments based on length of service, was indirectly discriminatory. Was it justified?

Surprisingly, the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled that where a pay differential was based on service, no further justification was required. They followed an ECJ decision, Danfoss . They therefore avoided exploring the difficult though familiar arguments, legally untested, of whether service based differentials can actually be objectively justified in a particular case. Does