TIME LIMIT

Jeffery and others v Secretary of State for Education and another

EAT: Elias J (President): 17 March 2006

The claimants were lecturers initially employed by the respondent college under a series of hourly paid part-time contracts for each academic year. They were subsequently given temporary and then permanent full-time contracts and entitlement to membership of the college's pension scheme. In 1994 they made claims under section 1 of the Equal Pay Act 1970 seeking to have their membership of the pension scheme backdated so as to include their previous employment under the part-time contracts. An employment tribunal chairman decided that the change from temporary to permanent status was a radical change in the terms of their contracts, and that, since that had occurred more than six months before they had brought their claims, the claimants had not been employed in the relevant employment in the six months preceding their claims, as required by section 2(4) of the Act, and he dismissed the claims.

The claimants appealed.

ELIAS J (PRESIDENT) held:
Where there was a stable employment relationship resulting from a succession of short-term contracts concluded at regular intervals in respect of the same employment to which the same pension scheme applied, Community law required the limitation period in section 2(4) of the Equal Pay Act 1970 to run from the end of the last contract forming part of that stable relationship. Although it might be said that entry into a permanent job did not destroy a stable employment relationship, it was not apt to describe the succession of short-term contracts and a permanent contract as a succession of short-term contracts, and, accordingly, it could not be said that there was a continuation of the stable relationship into a new permanent contract. Further, the chairman was entitled to conclude that, where an employee moved from a temporary relationship under a particular contract to a permanent relationship which might carry on indefinitely, there was a fundamental change in the nature of the relationship between the parties and their obligations such as to amount to a new contract as a matter of law. The claimants' stable employment relationship came to an end when the new permanent contracts were entered into, and their claims were, therefore, out of time.

The appeal was dismissed.

Appearances: The claimants in person; Dale Martin (Eversheds, Cardiff) for the college; the Secretary of State did not appear.