Judge approves equal pay claims of three female council workers.

In October 2008 Joyce Slack (cook), Rosalyn Elliot (day care assistant) and Karen Athersmith (home carer) brought claims against Cumbria County Council, saying they should not be paid less than men for doing work of equal value. A tribunal threw out the cases because it said there was a six-month time limit to claim on individual contracts. But on Friday the 3rd of April, the ruling was reversed.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, which took up their case, argued that the six-month limit should cover periods worked under previous contracts for the same employer. Lord Justice Mummery said that the Commission had raised a new point of law - that various contracts of employment for substantially the same work should be regarded as stable employment – which had not been argued before the Employment Appeal Tribunal, and that the proceedings 'had been transformed by the intervention of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.' But he added that the precedent set in today's case was likely to open the door for further equal pay claims in the public sector, adding to a growing number that had left the system 'bursting at the seams' and 'congested' with thousands of equal pay cases. John Wadham, the commission's legal group director, said: "This ruling will help protect employees who are essentially doing the same job over long periods, even when there are variations to their contracts."

The cost of settling equal pay claims is expected to cost Cumbria County Council £50m. Local authorities throughout the country face big bills to settle expected equal pay claims from female workers such as cooks and cleaners, who have historically been paid lower rates than their male counterparts.   

While emphasizing the importance of protecting women's individual rights to challenge unfair pay practices in the courts, the Commission renewed its call for new measures in the upcoming Equality Bill in order to help clear the backlog and deliver justice for women faster -- namely the introduction of representative actions, which would permit a number of claims of women working in similar circumstances for the same employer to be heard in batches.