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16 August 2007
Issue: 7286 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Employment law brief: 17 August 2007

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GMB v ALLEN
ANTIPATHY BETWEEN TRADE UNIONS AND dissident members
AUTONOMY VERSUS PATERNALISM
ROUGH INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

While most of the noises of wind that readers will have been hearing recently are the sounds of the incessant rain clouds in this miserable non summer, some may well have been the collective sighs of relief of trade unionists all over the country at the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in GMB v Allen [2007] UKEAT/425/06 (handed down on 31 July) allowing the union’s appeal against a tribunal decision that it had been guilty of sex discrimination and victimisation in not pursuing in full the claims of some female members to equal pay, in particular in relation to back pay.

EQUAL PAY CASE MANAGEMENT

The case is one of the latest stages in the equal pay trench warfare currently raging in the context of local authority pay in northern England. So worrying is this litigation in general—in terms of legal costs and tribunal/ACAS resources—that it even featured in the recent Gibbons Report on the

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