Christian care worker can be required to work on Sundays

A council which ordered a Christian care worker to work on Sundays was not liable for religious discrimination, the EAT has held.

The ruling comes as employment lawyers, Christian and secular activists eagerly await Tuesday's judgment by the European Court of Human Rights on four leading UK cases involving Christians at work - Eweida, Chaplin, Ladele and McFarlane.

Celestina Mba resigned in 2010 from her job as care worker at a children's home in Morden, after two years in which she had not been required to work on the Sabbath, in accordance with her beliefs.

However, the EAT ruled that it was legitimate for Merton council to ask full-time staff to work on Sundays, in rotation.

Delivering judgment in Mba v London Borough of Merton (UKEAT/0332/12/SM), Mr Justice Langstaff said the care worker could be required to work on Sundays under her contract.

'It was an aim of Merton, and required nationally, that continuity of care should be ensured insofar as possible,' he said.

'A lack of such continuity increases the risk of significant behavioural change in those children who have difficulty in communicating going unnoticed.'

Langstaff J said that when Mba was offered the job she understood that a promise had been made to her that she need not work on Sundays, but her managers said that all they agreed to do was take steps to accommodate her wishes in the short-term and this was accepted as the position by the tribunal.

The EAT heard that at the time of the care worker's resignation, in May 2010, the Equality Act had not come into force and the relevant law was the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.

Langstaff J said: 'The question on this appeal is whether the employment tribunal, which heard the claimant's complaint that she had been entitled to resign in circumstances in which her employer wrongfully insisted that she should work on Sundays, correctly approached the question whether it had objectively justified the requirement upon her to do so.

'We should make it clear at the outset of this judgment to anyone who expects the conclusion to amount either to a ringing endorsement of an individual's right not to be required to work on a Sunday on the one hand, or an employer's freedom to require it on the other, that they will both be disappointed.'

Langstaff J said it was not 'well expressed' for the employment tribunal to say that belief in Sunday as a day of rest was not a 'core component' of the Christian religion.

He said the tribunal's comment was a reference to evidence from an Anglican bishop at the tribunal, who said that 'some Christians' would not work on the Sabbath, apart from 'mercies' (particular holy days such as Easter), and others would only work in an emergency.

Langstaff J said the tribunal 'did not think it was adjudicating in evaluative terms' on religious belief, though it had been 'inelegant in its phraseology' and this was 'rightly giving rise to concern' on the claimant's part.

He concluded that the tribunal had made no error of law and had not been wrong in holding that the employer had justified its approach. He dismissed the discrimination claim.