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Lesley Baker, "Case Note: Sex Discrimination Against
Part-Time Workers: The "Biggs" Issues for Women" , Feminist Legal Studies VI/2 (1998),
forthcoming: Unfavourable treatment of part-time workers may amount to indirect
discrimination, since such conduct generally affects more women than men.
In R v Secretary of State for Employment ex parte Equal Opportunities
Commission (the EOC case), the House of Lords held that certain provisions
of UK law did not comply with EC law and as a result indirectly discriminated
against part-time workers. Mrs Biggs was a part-time worker who wished to
present a claim of unfair dismissal in the Industrial Tribunal, some eighteen
years after the date of her dismissal, but less than three months after
the HL decision in the EOC case. The Court of Appeal in Biggs held
that failure of legal advisers to appreciate the impact of EC law on UK
employment law at the time of Mrs Biggs' dismissal did not render "impossible
in practice" the presentation of a claim for unfair dismissal within
the three month time limit in the Industrial Tribunal. In Magorrian,
a case involving claims relating to backdating pensions rights, the approach
of the ECJ to what was or was not "impossible in practice" for
a claimant was significantly more generous than that of the CA in Biggs.
The case note examines the implications of the Magorrian decision
for retrospective claims of part-time workers in Industrial Tribunals.
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