In person For the v Respondent — 2020

The claimant, who started work for the respondent in 2008, brought claims of age discrimination, sex discrimination, disability discrimination, victimisation and unlawful deduction from wages. The tribunal dismissed all claims. It found that the contractual bonus scheme was discretionary and that the sick pay term entitled the claimant to company sick pay for three days only after probation, in addition to statutory sick pay.

On the age and sex claims, the tribunal found that most of the comparators relied on were not materially comparable because they had already reached assistant manager or manager level before arriving at Stratford, or were promoted from higher grades than the claimant. It accepted that the claimant had good sales performance, but found that the reason she was not promoted was not her age or sex. Instead, it found that she had not used the internal routes available to put herself forward for promotion and had not taken proactive steps to improve her prospects. It also found no evidence that the respondent promoted men over women, noting that several women were appointed to managerial roles during the claimant's employment.

The disability-related allegations concerned the period after the claimant fractured her right arm in December 2016. The tribunal found that she had an impairment, but not a disability at the material time, because the seriousness and likely duration of the condition were not yet sufficiently clear. It held that, on the evidence, she could potentially have met the statutory definition only from about June 2017 at the earliest. The tribunal also held that the disability-related allegations were out of time. Because of those findings, it did not need to decide whether the alleged remarks by managers were actually made.

The victimisation claim failed because the tribunal held that the 1 April 2012 statement about an incident in the Berkeley Street store was not a protected act, and the 30 June 2015 letter about appraisals was also not a protected act because it did not concern a matter capable of amounting to an Equality Act complaint. The tribunal also found there was no continuing course of conduct and that, in any event, the claim was out of time. The unlawful deduction claim failed because the claimant had no contractual entitlement to a 10% bonus or to full sick pay beyond three days, and the claims based on alleged earlier higher grades were not made out and were largely time-barred.