Part-time workers' pensions

Case 4: The facts

This case represents another stage in the long-running claim for pension rights that was pursued by around 60,000 women workers, once EU law had made it clear that their employers' policies of excluding them from access to pension schemes was unlawful discrimination.

The ruling

The EAT held that the women's right to an equal pension depends on a number of factors:

1. If they are excluded from entry into the pension scheme, their equal pay claim for a pension is valid. 2. If they can join the scheme but must positively exercise the right to join, even though full-time workers do not have to do anything, their claim is invalid. 3. If they can join but are not told this, or are even told the opposite, their claim is invalid - although they would have had a claim for breach of contract. 4. If they are employed on a series of contracts that are not all the same and do not follow on from one another, there is no stable employment relationship - this means their claims are invalid, if submitted more than six months after the termination of a contract that did not have a benefit which was later available to them. 5. If they were denied access to a pension scheme by a previous employer but subsequently transferred under TUPE, their claim is valid - even if taken against the new employer, and in the absence of the new employer having a legal obligation to provide a pension.

Preston v Wolverhampton Healthcare NHS Trust [2004] IRLR 96