The Supreme Court has allowed the appeal of a taxi driver in a landmark employment case involving the rights of part-time workers.
Ruling unanimously this morning, the court found that a part-time worker’s status can be an effective cause of less favourable treatment but does not have to be the sole cause.
Taxi driver Warren Augustine brought an employment tribunal claim against his former employer Data Cars Limited. During his employment in 2016, Augustine paid Data Cars a ‘circuit fee’ of £148 each week for access to its booking dispatch system. The fee was the same for all drivers, regardless of whether they were full- or part-time.
Augustine argued that the circuit fee contravened Regulation 5 of the Part-Time Workers Regulations, as part-time workers had to pay a higher fee per hour worked than full-time workers.
The case was dismissed by the employment tribunal. It found the circuit fee charge was not grounded on the fact that Augustine was a part-time worker. Subsequent appeals in the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal failed, with the latter finding by a majority that part-time status was not the sole ground for the less favourable treatment. The court granted permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Lady Simler, with whom Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Hamblen, Lord Leggatt and Lord Richards agreed, in Augustine v Data Cars Limited, said: ‘The question on this appeal concerns the scope of the protection from unlawful discrimination afforded to part-time workers under the Part-Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000.
‘The question raised by the appeal is whether the right only applies where the part-time worker establishes that part-time status was the sole ground or reason for the less favourable treatment in question, rather than simply an effective cause of it.’
The Supreme Court agreed with the majority finding by the Court of Appeal and its reasons were ‘essentially the same’.
Though the CoA had dismissed the appeal, it had agreed with Augustine’s reasoning but felt bound to follow a contrary decision based on a judgment, since disapproved by the Supreme Court, which treated as ‘effectively binding’ a decision of a Scottish court.
Lady Simler said: ‘What matters is what was intended by the language used in the 2000 Regulations themselves.
‘It would have been easy enough to have used the words “solely because” in sub-paragraph (2)(a) of the 2000 Regulations if the intention was simply to reproduce the wording of clause 4.1[of the Framework Agreement]. That was not done, and there is no warrant for rewriting the regulation.’
Requiring part-time status be ‘an effective cause of the less favourable treatment…is consistent both with the clear language of regulation 5(2) and with the protective purpose of this regulation’, the Supreme Court said, adding: ‘To hold otherwise is inconsistent with the approach standardly taken to questions of causation in discrimination cases and risks uncertainty and unreasonable outcomes.’
The judgment acknowledged that other causes of the unfair treatment may be relevant if the treatment is justified on objective grounds or to compensation.
Allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court found ‘the 2000 Regulations prohibit less favourable treatment of part-time workers where their part-time status is an effective cause of the impugned treatment. It need not be the sole cause’.
The judgment also expressed ‘the court’s gratitude’ that both parties had pro bono representation.
William Granger, employment law partner at Wedlake Bell, said the judgment gave part-time workers ‘greater discrimination protection’.
He added: ‘The legal test for what amounts to less favourable treatment of part time workers under the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 is now whether part-time status is the effective and predominant cause of adverse treatment, not the sole cause.
‘This change significantly expands protection for part-time workers as it makes it substantially easier for them to establish less favourable treatment claims. This removes the current anomaly whereby part-time workers have less protection than workers protected under other discrimination law.’
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