Employment law stories in the news – 26.03.2018 to 01.04.2018

In the latest of our series of posts on employment law stories in the news, we examine ten employment law-related stories that made headlines between 26 March and 1 April 2018

  1. Worker on sick leave accused boss of spying on her Facebook account after ‘partying’ – Credit controller Hilary Long had complained that a director kept watch outside her home and scrutinised her social media messages. And this week she was awarded £4,414 by a Birmingham Employment Tribunal, which ruled she was unfairly dismissed by Gravity Credit Control (The Birmingham Mail)
  2. Nine out of 10 public sector bodies pay men more than women – Groundbreaking legislation forcing companies to disclose their gender pay gap for the first time has revealed that almost nine out of 10 public sector organisations pay men more than women (The Guardian)
  3. AA sued by entrepreneur Lucy Burnford – A former AA employee is suing the breakdown recovery company for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination. Lucy Burnford – a founder of car maintenance website Motoriety – has started legal proceedings against the AA, claiming she was made redundant when she was seven months pregnant (The Times)
  4. Egg Producer and Joinery Contractor fined after worker falls from roof – A Preston egg production company and a joinery sub-contractor were today fined after a worker fell through a roof. Preston Magistrates’ Court heard how an employee of T& J Leigh had been helping the joinery contractor Harry Jackson to re-roof an old feed mill building when he fell five metres through a gap (HSE)
  5. Caribbean engineer awarded £11,000 for racial discrimination after colleagues mocked his accent – An engineer of Caribbean origin who claimed his colleagues subjected him to racist remarks in the workplace has been awarded more than £11,000 after a tribunal found he was the victim of direct racial discrimination (People Management)
  6. PC Angus Bowler wins four-year race discrimination case against Kent Police – A police chief says race discrimination is taken seriously, despite a tribunal finding that an officer had been victimised. PC Angus Bowler was serving on the front line against terrorism and illegal immigration at the UK border at Coquelles in France in 2014 when he brought his complaint against Kent Police (Kent Online)
  7. Company fined after apprentice suffers fractured skull at commercial vehicle maintenance company – A Birmingham based motor vehicle company has been fined after an apprentice suffered head injuries whilst undertaking maintenance work on a commercial vehicle (HSE)
  8. Married fine art professor is sacked after bedding student half his age in a hotel before going onto mark her final dissertation – A married fine art professor had sex with a student half his age before he went on to mark her final dissertation, a tribunal has heard (The Daily Mail)
  9. Michelin fined £5k for breaching rights of Dundee worker who was sacked unfairly – A global tyre manufacturer has been handed a maximum fine after breaching a former Dundee employee’s rights (The Evening Telegraph)
  10. Derby County to sue former chief executive Sam Rush for £6.8m over excessive transfer fees, player wages and payments made to agents – Derby are pursuing Rush in a civil action at the High Court. Rush, meanwhile, has a counter-claim of about £2m for breach of contract and what the report describes as ‘an alleged 5 per cent shareholding’, which it is understood the lawyer received for his role in Mel Morris’s takeover of the club in 2015 (The Daily Mail)