Below you can read the information you need regarding discrimination employment termination, redundancy and if you have to resign due to factors involved.
Termination of employment and disability discrimination
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Discrimination at work - redundancy
If your employer wants to make you redundant they must base their decision on objective criteria and make sure they follow a selection procedure which is fair. Sometimes if you’ve been made redundant and you think you’ve been treated unfairly it may be unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.
Read this page to find out about when you may have been discriminated against if you’re made redundant.
What’s redundancy? Redundancy is a form of dismissal. It's where you’re dismissed for one of the following reasons:
your employer’s need for employees to do work of a particular kind has ended or diminished
your workplace closes
your employer goes out of business.
Redundancy is a potentially fair reason for dismissing you but sometimes it may unfair dismissal.
It can also be unlawful discrimination. This is the case when:
it isn’t a genuine redundancy and redundancy is being used to disguise a discriminatory reason for the dismissal, or
it's a genuine redundancy, but the procedure that was followed when dismissing you was discriminatory.
When might it be unlawful discrimination if you're made redundant? Something will only be unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act if it's because of:
age
disability
gender reassignment
marriage and civil partnership
pregnancy and maternity
race
religion or belief
sex
sexual orientation.
The Equality Act calls these things protected characteristics.
If you’re made redundant, you may be able to claim unlawful discrimination if your employer:
uses the redundancy as a way of disguising discrimination - the real reason for the dismissal was not redundancy but because of a protected characteristic, or
uses selection criteria which directly or indirectly discriminate against you because of a protected characteristic.
When is selection criteria discriminatory?The selection criteria may be directly discriminatory - for example, if an employer decides to make you redundant because you've become disabled. Direct discrimination can never be justified.
Sometimes the criteria or the way employees are scored against the criteria may be indirectly discriminatory. This happens when the criteria are applied to everyone, but the criteria themselves or the way they are scored disadvantage you and other people like you who share your protected characteristic. However, that disadvantage may not be discriminatory if the employer can justify their choice of criteria.
Example 1 You're Polish and work in a sandwich processing plant. Your employer uses the ability to write good English as one of its selection criteria in a redundancy exercise. This criteria places you and other Polish workers at a particular disadvantage. If the job involves using the written word it may be justifiable to include this in the criteria, but not justifiable if the work involves processing food and packing sandwiches.
Example 2 You work in a shop where there are full and part-time sales assistants. Your employer has decided that whether you are full or part-time will be one of the selection criteria when deciding who to make redundant. Part-time employees are selected for redundancy. You’re a woman and work part-time and so have been made redundant. In your workplace, most part-time employees are women and most full-time employees are men. Using this as one of the criteria is potentially indirectly discrimination. This is because women are particularly disadvantaged in comparison with men. However, if the employer can show a tribunal that it was justified to use this as one of the criteria, then it will not be indirect discrimination.
Disability discriminationIf you’re made redundant and your employer uses attendance and absence record as a selection criteria, it may be disability discrimination if your employer takes your disability-related absences into account.
If you resign because of the harassment
Harassment, whether related to a protected characteristic or not, and failure to protect you from harassment, are serious breaches of your contract of employment. While you should think carefully about resigning, if you do you may be able to make a claim for unfair constructive dismissal. Not everyone has the right to claim unfair constructive dismissal so you should check your legal position first.