Newsflash: Sex discrimination and shared parental leave pay

What do we already know?

We updated you in our June 2017 Newsletter Discrimination and shared parental leave pay on the case of Ali v Capita Customer Management Ltd.

The Tribunal decided that the employer had discriminated against its employee, on grounds of sex, by not paying him his full salary when he was on shared parental leave. This was because a mother taking maternity leave during the same period would have received her full salary.

What’s new?

The EAT has upheld the employer’s appeal against the above decision (available here).

The EAT decided that the employee was not discriminated against on grounds of sex. The EAT considered that the employee could not compare himself with a woman on maternity leave. Maternity leave has a different purpose from shared parental leave; maternity leave is for the health and wellbeing of the mother, whereas the purpose of shared parental leave is to care for the child.

This is good news for employers and we will update you further on the detail of this case in our April 2018 Newsletter.