Unfair Dismissal And The Equality Act Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Unfair Dismissal And The Equality Act - Essay Example The first thing that a tribunal has to look at before it makes an award for a claim brought under unfair dismissal is to first look at the substantial merits of the case as was shown in the case of Iceland Frozen foods limited .vs. Jones the tribunal held that as to the substantive merits of the case they did not regard Mr. Jones failure to be serious and did not regard it reasonable to dismiss him on those grounds. Does Sarah woods case have substantial merit to constitute a claim? In the case of Sarah Wood, her employer discriminated against her on the basis that she could not speak Spanish and that she was not a Catholic. This also led to harassment from his employer and eventually her dismissal. The Employment Act provides for two tests when looking at a claim for unfair dismissal. It will first look to see if the employer acted reasonably in dismissing the claimant and further if the employer had fair reasons to dismiss the claimant. In the case of Sarah Woods, her employer did not have fair reasons to dismiss her and he did not act reasonably in doing so. There are dismissals that the employment tribunal regards to be automatically unfair even if the process of the dismissal was appropriate. These dismissals are those that fall under discrimination and especially based on race and religion. Race and religion fall under protected characteristics. There are several protected characteristics (S.4 of the Equality Act 2010) laid down in the Equality Act. These characteristics are aimed to be protected from discrimination (Deringer, 2010, p.1). Mr. Rodriguez disregarded the fact that Sarah woods had protected characteristic and contravened the equality act. This led to the discrimination of his employee. Which form of discrimination than did Mr. Rodriguez portray?