Part time work:
your rights
The Sex Discrimination Act (SDA)
does not specifically outlaw discrimination against part-time
workers, but it does include a definition of indirect discrimination
against women or against married people. Since the majority of
part-time workers are women, discrimination against part-time
workers can often amount to indirect discrimination against women.
Part-time workers are also
protected by the Part-Time Workers Regulations. The
Regulations make it unlawful for a part-time worker to be treated
less favourably than comparable full-time workers. This includes no
less favourable:
-
rates of pay (including
overtime pay once they have worked more than the normal
full-time hours)
-
access to pension schemes
and benefits
-
access to training and
career development
-
holiday entitlement
-
entitlement to career
break schemes, contractual sick pay, contractual maternity and
parental pay
-
treatment in the selection
criteria for promotion and transfer, and for redundancy.
In order to bring a claim
under the Regulations, a part-time worker has to identify a
full-time worker with whom to compare her/his treatment. The
part-time worker must:
-
work for the same employer
as the full-timer,
-
do the same or broadly
similar work (taking into account experience and skills where
relevant),
-
work under the same kind
of contract as the full-timer.
Please note that it does not
matter whether the full-time member of staff with whom you are
comparing yourself is male or female.
If you previously worked
full-time but have recently changed to part-time work (for example
because your employer has allowed you to return to work from
maternity leave on a job-share basis), you can compare your
treatment now with your treatment when you were full-time. This
means that if, for example, your employer has allowed you to
job-share, but has reduced your hourly rate of pay as a result, you
can use the PTWR to challenge this.
Depending on the facts of your
case, you may therefore have a potential case under the Sex
Discrimination Act, or the Part-time Workers Regulations. You may
also have a claim under the Equal Pay Act if your complaint
is about pay or any other contractual benefit. Under the Equal Pay
Act, you have to identify another worker with whom to compare your
treatment; this person must be of the opposite sex, and be engaged
on similar work, or work which is of equal value.
If in doubt about which
legislation your case falls under, it is advisable to err on the
side of caution and claim under whichever legislation seems on the
face of it to be relevant. This is because it is easy to strike out
a claim later on when you have more information, but it is more
difficult to add a claim later, particularly if your time limit for
doing so has expired in the meantime.
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