Sex Discrimination?

Relationships are hard enough at the best times, but add an employment perspective and things can become pretty messy. A man employed a woman and they later began a consensual sexual relationship. In fact, they came to be regarded in the local community as man and wife. He supported her financially and paid for her to undertake college and university courses, whilst still working with him.

One day, the man sees his partner, and let’s not forget, his employee, out walking with another man (with whom, it turned out, she was also having a sexual relationship).

The same day, no doubt driven by personal rather than business-related reasons, the man sacks the woman.

The woman brought claims of unfair dismissal and sex discrimination.

Even the most infrequent reader of these articles will appreciate that the woman won her claim of unfair dismissal. You cannot just sack an employee without following a proper procedure, or without good reason, no matter how fed up you feel.

In relation to the claim of sex discrimination, the Employment Tribunal said that if she hadn’t been a woman she would not have been in the relationship and so would not have been dismissed. They said this amounted to sex discrimination.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal decided that this was the wrong decision. The test should be whether she had been dismissed because she was a woman or for some other reason. The reason for dismissal was in fact the breakdown of their relationship, not the fact that she was a woman. Dismissal would have been the outcome if his partner had been male.

So the final decision was that, while she had been unfairly dismissed, she had not been the victim of sex discrimination.

All in all a pretty sad case for everyone concerned.

Published 06/08/2007.