Employ at your peril
Article Date: Nov 03 2005
UK and European legislation has ensured that the days of an entrepreneur or CEO being master of his own house with regard to employment issues has long gone.
Beware the ’serial saboteur’ if you are recruiting suitable people to work for your company. This new breed of chancer is someone who is not necessarily looking for work all that seriously, but knows enough about employment law to collect five-figure sums as compensation for being ‘unfairly’ passed over.
Employment law specialist Guy Guinan of solicitor Halliwells says he alone has dealt with four such cases in the past 18 months. It might be someone who applies for the post under the name of Patel and does not make it to the shortlist and who then applies as Smith, with virtually identical qualifications and experience, and is chosen.
Or, as in Guinan’s recent experience, it might be a wheelchair-bound job applicant who sent in two job applications, one enclosing a photograph of the applicant in a wheelchair and one without such a picture. The first application was rejected at an early stage and the second made it to the shortlist.
‘He had a prima facie case for discrimination’, recalls Guinan, ‘and it was settled amicably’, at an undisclosed cost to the employer. The applicant in question, he says, ‘presents lots of claims like this to lots of companies and is doing reasonably well out of not getting a job. In fact, that is his job. It helps that he is competent at law.’
In the modern world of work, employment tribunals, to which most complaints are brought, and the courts, which hear appeals and the larger cases, are being kept busier than ever. Government departments, Citizens’ Advice Bureaux, contingency-fee lawyers, benefit agencies and helplines are keeping employees and potential employees better informed than ever before of their rights — as employers have been discovering to their cost.
Discrimination dogs the unwary
Serial saboteurs are just one of the challenges now facing employers, as measures against discrimination in recruitment, promotion and treatment at work multiply. Small, young companies now need to take as much care and go through the same time-consuming and costly procedures as big businesses — and face penalties on top of the inevitable disruption ranging from a maximum £56,800 in unfair dismissal cases to unlimited compensation (millions of pounds in some City cases) if discrimination is proven.
Taking on employees is no longer the informal task it once was. The business of hiring people carries several potential hazards, most arising from anti-discrimination laws, which often stem from European Union directives.
The European Equal Treatment Directive now coming into force makes employers vicariously liable if, for example, a male member of staff harasses a female colleague, by, say, persistently disparaging her appearance, whether the boss knew about it or not. Sexual harassment need not take a sexual form: if, for instance, there is one woman and three men in a work group and the men put her tools on a shelf too high for her to reach, that is sexual harassment, says Denise Tomlinson, employment expert at solicitor Lewis Silkin.
