The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has recently addressed the issue of what constitutes "same employment" when an individual is making an equal pay claim.

In this case, Mrs White was a manager at Burton’s Foods at the company’s Blackpool site.  In her equal pay claim, she used former and present managers at other sites as comparators.

The original Employment Tribunal determined that the comparators were not in the "same employment" as Mrs White.

The Equal Pay Act requires that "common terms and conditions of employment are observed either generally or for employees of relevant classes” and this had not been satisfied.

Since the other sites had come into common ownership, there had been no harmonisation of the terms and conditions of employment throughout the company.

This conclusion was upheld by the EAT. They stated that the correct approach to the issue was a common sense one, and that the relevant case of British Coal Corporation v Smith should be consulted, which clearly demonstrates that tribunals should use the term "broadly similar" when determining whether or not given comparators are in the "same employment".

Technorati Tags: Employment Law, Sex Discrimination