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26 November 2021 / Charles Pigott
Issue: 7958 / Categories: Features , Employment , Discrimination
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Discrimination by association: where next?

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An employment tribunal has given the first UK ruling on indirect associative discrimination: Charles Pigott reports
  • An employment tribunal has upheld an indirect associative discrimination claim from a worker who was caring for her disabled mother.
  • This is believed to be the first time that any UK court has interpreted the definition of indirect discrimination in favour of claimants who are not themselves members of the relevant protected group.

In Follows v Nationwide Building Society (Case No 2201937/2018V), the employment tribunal had to consider claims arising from the dismissal of Mrs J Follows on redundancy grounds by Nationwide Building Society.

Mrs Follows was a senior lending manager (SLM). She had a homeworking contract, but in conjunction with a redundancy programme which aimed to reduce the overall number of SLMs, Nationwide decided that she could no longer work from home. The reason given was that they needed ‘effective on-site supervision’ and that there were now too few SLMs to provide this, unless all SLMs came into the office full-time. The claimant

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