Flexible working

Case 1: The facts

After an informal request to reduce her hours so that she could look after her grandchild had been turned down, warehouse assistant Mrs Rutty put in a formal request to move to a three-day week under the statutory provisions for flexible working. But her employer again refused her request, saying that it would have a detrimental impact on performance in the warehouse.

A tribunal upheld Rutty’s subsequent discrimination claim, on the grounds that her employer had not shown it to be impossible for a warehouse assistant to work part-time.

Her employer appealed, on the basis that the tribunal had not been entitled to examine the reasons for refusing the request. It also claimed that Rutty had not submitted a statutory grievance.

The ruling

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) upheld the tribunal’s decision, saying that a tribunal is entitled to investigate an employer’s reasons for rejecting a flexible working request to see whether they are factually correct. It is entitled to question whether the employer could have coped without disruption, whether it could have made up the time and what other staff felt about the request.

In this case, the employer had not been able to show that moving Rutty to a three-day week would have had a detrimental effect on performance.

The EAT also confirmed that Rutty’s formal request for flexible working did constitute a written grievance under the statutory dispute resolution procedures.

Commotion Ltd v Rutty UKEAT/0418/05 ([2006] IRLR 171)