Information & Resources
Part-time Workers Regulations
What are the Part-Time Workers Regulations?
The Part-Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 state that employers cannot treat part-timers less favourably than their full-time equivalents and cannot subject them to any disadvantage (or detriment) because of their part part-time status, unless they can justify it.
Who do the Regulations cover?
They apply to all workers - which means they protect not only employees but also anyone working under a contract of employment and the self employed working under a contract personally to do the work. They apply from the first day of employment.
What protection do they provide?
The Regulations cover all contractual terms including pay rates, contractual sick and maternity pay; access to occupational pension schemes and training; annual holidays, maternity and parental leave, career breaks; and fringe benefits such as subsidised mortgages, staff discounts and health insurance.
Who can part-timers compare themselves with?
Part-time workers have to compare themselves with someone doing the same or broadly similar work. However, that worker must also be someone who is employed full-time under the same type of contract whether on a permanent or fixed-term basis.
They should also be based at the same “establishment”, but if there is no one that fits that description at that workplace, then the part-timer can compare themselves with a full-timer employed by the same employer elsewhere.
If the part-time worker used to be a full-timer, then they have the right to compare their treatment with the way they were treated as a full-timer.
The issue of comparators was considered in the leading case of Matthews v Kent & Medway Towns Fire Authority, a Thompsons case, in which part-time fire fighters claimed that they were treated less favourably because they were denied access to the pension scheme.
The House of Lords held that, when considering whether the comparators were engaged in the same or broadly similar work, Tribunals should focus on the similarities of the work being done as well as the importance of the work to the employer as a whole rather than the differences between the two groups.
Can employers justify different treatment?
Employers can justify less favourable treatment of part-timers in two ways - by relying on the pro rata principle and objective justification.
The pro rata principle allows employers to claim that although the part-time worker or fixed term employee was treated less favourably, it was in proportion to the terms on which they offered pay and / or benefits to other workers.
For instance, holidays - these should be pro rated for a part-timer in line with the number of holidays for a full-timer, based on the number of part-time hours they work. The same principle does not, however, apply to overtime, with the result that part-time workers cannot claim less favourable treatment when they are not paid overtime until they have worked the same hours as a full-timer.
Employers can also justify less favourable treatment of a part-time worker if they can show that the treatment was necessary and appropriate to achieve a legitimate aim, such as a genuine business objective.
However, a number of recent decisions have set some limits on this test. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Adeneler v Ellinikos Oranismos Galaklos in 2006 and in Del Cerro Alonso v Osakidetza-Servicio Vasco de Salud in 2007 that reliance on a general law or collective agreement does not amount to objective justification.
Instead, it said that to establish objective justification courts have to look at the “precise and concrete factors characterising the employment condition to which it relates, in the specific context in which it occurs and on the basis of objective and transparent criteria in order to ensure that the unequal treatment in fact responds to a genuine need, is appropriate for achieving the objective pursued and is necessary for that purpose”.
What can workers do if they are treated unfavourably?
Part-timers who think they have been treated less favourably than a full-timer can ask their employer for a written statement of the reasons for the treatment.
The employer must provide the statement within 21 days of the request. The part-timer can use the statement, or the failure to provide one, in any Tribunal claim they bring.
They must bring the claim within three months less one day of the act that they are complaining about.
What remedies are available?
There are three remedies available to a Tribunal:
- Declaration
- Compensation
- Recommendations
Declaration
A declaration is a statement of the rights of the worker at the end of a claim.
Compensation
Tribunals can award compensation, but it only has the power to order compensation / remedial action going back for two years in the case of pensions and it cannot include compensation for injury to feelings.
Recommendations
The Tribunal can make recommendations for the purpose of preventing or reducing the effect of the discrimination on the claimant or any other person even though they were not a party to the claim. This could include taking action to remove or reduce the detriment within a specified period.
Thompsons provides updates to trade union activists on the law, the series of updates includes:
- Accidents at work
- Age Discrimination
- Disability Discrimination
- Equal Pay
- Equality Act 2011
- Family Friendly Rights
- Part-time Workers Regulations
- Pregnancy and Maternity
- Race Discrimination
- Religion or Belief
- Sex Discrimination
- Sexual Orientation
Discrimination
- Strain Injuries
- Stress at Work
- Unfair Dismissal &
Redundancy
- Working Time
