Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Today, in the Lefebvre HR and Employment Law podcast, we're discussing the Employment Tribunal judgment in the case of Islam-Wright and Arts Council, in which the tribunal was asked to determine whether an employee who was disciplined for criticising gender-critical colleagues was constructively dismissed. In this case, the employee worked for the Arts Council, which provided funding to a community network, including the London Community Foundation. At that time, the foundation proposed to make a grant award to a charity, the LGB Alliance, which represents the gender-critical viewpoint that sex is binary. Although the Arts Council was not directly involved in this grant award, it led to widespread external and internal adverse criticism, with opponents arguing the LGB Alliance were transphobic. Following this, an internal email was circulated asking staff to sign a spreadsheet in support of a collective grievance. The employee signed this and added a comment suggesting that hearing gender-critical views in the workplace was terrifying, and akin to hearing openly racist statements. Almost immediately, employees who felt harassed by the criticism of their gender-critical views raised grievances, and other staff raised concerns that the spreadsheet was inciting hate, bullying and or victimisation. The employer triggered a disciplinary process against the employee in relation to her comments, following which the employee raised a dignity at work complaint before eventually resigning. The Employment Tribunal upheld the employee's constructive dismissal claim, holding that the disciplinary process had been mishandled and this led to a breakdown in trust and confidence. The employer had legitimate concerns about its workplace culture. However, instead of trying to address the issue informally, it had been escalated into a formal disciplinary process led by its senior HR partner, who was more focused on reducing the risk of claims and grievances than on fairness. This focus led to the employee's dignity at work complaint being dismissed without proper consideration. Taken together, this amounted to a breach of trust and confidence entitling the employee to resign and consider herself constructively unfairly dismissed. This non-binding first instance decision demonstrates the importance of ensuring any grievances raised by an employee during a disciplinary process are fairly considered and highlights the tensions and conflict that can exist where there are extreme differences of belief or opinion between staff. While an employer may, or indeed need to, discipline an employee for inappropriately manifesting their beliefs in the workplace, the employer should tread carefully and should not be seen to be prioritising one protected characteristic over another, and must also be careful not to discipline an employee merely for expressing a belief that is different to others. Look out for further episodes in this series to stay up to date on all things HR and employment law related.