Mr A Arif v Manpower UK Ltd and 1 other — 2019

The claimant was accepted to be disabled by nerve damage affecting his right hand and wrist, including loss of strength and grip, pain, and difficulty with manual tasks. The tribunal found both respondents lacked actual knowledge of disability at the relevant time, but that the second respondent could reasonably have been expected to know by 20 November 2017 and the first respondent by 7 December 2017 at the latest.

The tribunal found that moving the claimant from FA1 to FA2 was not itself unfavourable treatment, but requiring him to undertake FA2 roles he could not do was unfavourable treatment by the second respondent. It accepted that the claimant had genuine pain, discomfort and difficulty in those roles and that the later termination of his assignment arose because he could not do the FA2 roles allocated to him, which was something arising in consequence of disability.

The second respondent's justification defence did not succeed; the tribunal did not accept that requiring the claimant to undertake roles he was physically incapable of doing without proper reasonable adjustments was proportionate. The first respondent had a legitimate aim of complying with contractual obligations to the second respondent, but immediately removing the claimant from the assignment without a further process was not found proportionate.

For reasonable adjustments, the tribunal found the PCP concerning the requirements of specified FA2 roles was applied by the second respondent, not the first respondent. The claimant was substantially disadvantaged because he was unable to perform the roles and his assignment was terminated. The second respondent had not taken reasonable steps to identify a suitable role in light of the claimant's particular difficulties, although the tribunal accepted it would not have been reasonable to rebalance individual processes for him.