British Road Services Ltd v Loughran
| Jurisdiction | Northern Ireland |
| Judgment Date | 01 January 1996 |
| Date | 01 January 1996 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Northern Ireland) |
- Objective justification -Grounds other than sex - Collective bargaining -Company employing office workers comprising 75% females and 25% males and warehouse workers comprising 100% males - Female office workers claiming equal pay with warehouse workers - Work of equal value - Company rejecting claim on grounds that even if work of equal value difference in pay was result of separate collective bargaining processes of both groups of workers -Circumstances when collective bargaining process objective justification of pay differential between two jobs - Equal Pay Act (Northern Ireland), 1970, s, 1 (3) - Equal Pay (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland), 1984 (S.I. No. 16).
The appellant company employed office and warehouse workers at its storage and distribution facility in Mallusk. The office workers comprised both male and female employees but the warehouse workers were exclusively male. The office and warehouse workers' terms and conditions of employment including their pay structures were determined by collective bargaining between the company and the workers' trade union. The same trade union represented both groups of workers but the collective bargaining for each group was carried out separately and independently of the other. The agreement between the company and the office workers governed the terms and conditions, grades and pay scales of all the clerical staff (both male and female) in Mallusk and throughout the remainder of the company's premises in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Under that agreement males and females were employed on the same terms and conditions. At all material times the ratio of male and female clerical staff governed by the agreement was approximately 75% female and 25% male although the ratio of male to female clerical workers in Mallusk was higher. A separate agreement applied to the warehouse workers at Mallusk who were at all material times exclusively male. The respondents, who were female office workers employed by the company at Mallusk, complained to an industrial tribunal that they had performed work of equal value to the male warehouse workers and that they were therefore entitled to receive the same pay as those workers in accordance with s. 1(2)(c) of the Equal Pay Act (Northern Ireland), 1970, and art. 119 of the EC Treaty. The company contended, inter alia, that it had not discriminated against the respondents as, even if the work performed by the...
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