Discrimination. Can an agrieved employee ask to see co-workers employment contract?

[declanja]

An issue has arisen in the work place and one worker feels they are being discriminated against compared to their colleague.

They are being told that their colleague has a different employment contract and therefore no discrimination is taking place.

Can the aggrieved worker ask to see their co workers contract as they are not convinced it is different?

 

[sblandscapin]

No that is a private agreement with the employer and the employee and cannot be viewed by others without bout other parties permission,

 

[declanja]

Thanks for your reply. It is difficult for a worker to claim on discrimination then if contracts cannot be seen as employer can claim different employees have different contracts.

 

[ajapale]

Hi Declan,

Ive expanded your title to more fully reflect your question.

Is the aggrieved employee a member of a trade union?

What is the broad nature of the alleged discrimination? (ie sex, race, religion etc)

aj

 

[Brendan Burgess]

The employment contract is unlikely to be the source of the discrimination.

Discrimination under the Equality Act is restricted to 9 specific grounds:

• Gender
• Civil status (married, etc)
• Family status (pregnant, parent etc)
• Sexual orientation
• Religion
• Age (does not apply to a person under 16)
• Disability
• Race
• Membership of the Traveller community.

You don't need to see the employment contract to establish this.

An employer is fully entitled to pay one employee more than another employee as long as the grounds for so doing is not one of the above.

The only relevance of a contract that I can think of would be if the contract says "You will be appointed to the assistant accounant role and on retirement of the accountant, you will be appointed accountant". Subsequently someone might complain about that promotion being discriminatory.

Brendan

 

[declanja]

Thanks AJ and Brendan. From reading your replies it does not seem to fit as discrimination. It would come under the guise of preferential treatment and when the agrieved workers complained they were advised that the other worker had a different employment contract. This was where the query arose.

There is a union and it may be taken up with them.