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Employment team assists educational establishment in defeating equal pay claim

Meticulous preparation from the Northampton employment team led to an equal pay claim against a client being thrown out by a tribunal.

The team was instructed to act on behalf of a client which operates a number of schools in relation to an Employment Tribunal claim for equal pay that had been issued against them.

The employee who issued the claim was a teacher at one of the schools. They claimed that they undertook “like work” or “work of equal value” to the work undertaken by a teacher in the same department at another school operated by the client and argued they should receive pay equal to the other teacher.

However, the schools at which the two teachers worked were very different. This in turn meant that the work undertaken, and more particularly the pressures on the claimant and the other teacher, were also very different.

The employment team therefore took the stance that the two teachers were not engaged in “like work” or “work of equal value” as the responsibilities and demands that were placed on the other teacher were far greater than the demands placed on the claimant.

Alternatively, if it was found that the claimant was engaged in “like work” or “work or equal value”, Hewitsons argued that the educational establishment had a genuine material reason for the difference in pay due to distinctions between the schools and therefore substantial differences in the roles of staff at each school.

A case management discussion was then ordered by the tribunal to consider the issues to be determined and how best to proceed with the management of the claim. In order to save costs, and at Hewitsons’ request, it was agreed that the issue as to whether the teacher’s work was “like work” to that of the other would be dealt with as a preliminary issue, and the claim of “work of equal value” would be put to one side until the first had been decided.

The next stage involved collating information and statistics relating to each of the schools from which Hewitsons prepared a report setting out the differences between each school, statistics to back up these differences, and how the differences between the two schools affected the responsibility and the work of the staff the school employed. This report was used as the basis of the witness evidence at the full merits hearing.

The merits hearing subsequently took place to consider whether the teacher was engaged in “like work” to that of the other. The Employment Tribunal held that the two teachers were not employed in “like work” and so this element of the claimant’s claim failed.

The tribunal, in its judgment, looked at the differences between the two schools and found that the duties of staff at the school at which the other teacher was employed were of a different order to those of staff at the school at which the claimant was employed and that the other teacher had more responsibility. As a result of the judgment, the claimant withdrew the remaining claim against the client.