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Issue 56 (March 2001)

Contents

Part-timers win at last
There will be another one along in a moment
Calculating holiday pay
Sex, race and equality
Experiences of political discrimination
Lord Chancellor scrapes home  

Part-timers win at last

Preston and Others v Wolverhampton Healthcare NHS Trust and Others: Judgement of the House of Lords; 8 February 2001

On 8 February, the Lords finally gave judgment in the long-running part-time pensions test cases, known as Preston and others v Wolverhampton Healthcare NHS Trust and others. Even now, the ruling only relates to preliminary issues. Nonetheless, the tide has now turned after the successful trip to Luxembourg, and many part-timers now have a realistic expectation of compensation.

The preliminary issues decided were as follows:

part-timers can count service back to April 1976 for pension purposes;
the six month time limit for presenting a claim to an employment tribunal under the Equal Pay Act does not contravene EU law;
for those employed under a succession of contracts within a "stable employment relationship", notably teachers and lecturers, the six month time limit does not begin to run until the end of the last contract.

Many claims will not now be able to proceed because they were not lodged within six months of the applicant leaving employment. However, all claims lodged within the six month time limit will now go on to the next stage of the Tribunal process. This is the determination of issues common to individual pension schemes. The third and final stage will then be the determination of individual cases.

The Tribunal Chair with overall responsibility for these cases, now based in Nottingham, will call a directions hearing, probably in London, shortly. At that hearing he will set a timetable for the determination of the scheme-specific points at the second stage of the process.

We know that unions have many thousands of these cases lodged with tribunals nationally. We appreciate that their administration stretches resources. But now is the time when unions should ensure that they have accurate logs of their cases, broken down by reference to pension scheme, dates of employment and hours worked. It is possible that the Chair of Tribunals in Nottingham will require the selection of test cases and the processing of the second stage within a tight timetable.

Two important points to remember. First, because of the way the time limit works in the Equal Pay Act, the six months does not actually start to run until the end of employment. This means that part-timers who are still employed (or who left employment less than six months ago) can still lodge Tribunal claims, even though the period of exclusion from the pension scheme on grounds of part-time status came to an end a number of years ago.

Secondly, in contributory schemes, part-timers who win their cases will still have to pay the employees' contributions if they want to take up their rights to back-dated pensions.
This is a major triumph for part-timers throughout the country. It is also a tribute to the determination and commitment of the test case unions under the coordination of the TUC.

A fuller briefing is available from the Employment Rights Unit, Thompsons Solicitors, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London.