17 July 2008
City law firm, Wedlake Bell have said that UK employers with
occupational pension schemes could be hit by a massive bill for
retrospective Age and Sexual Orientation related discrimination
going back decades, following two recent European Courts of Justice
cases.
Wedlake Bell says that UK pension schemes and their sponsoring
employers expect only to have to pay damages for discrimination
against members or their dependents on the basis of age or sexual
orientation after 2 December 2006 and 1 December 2003 respectively.
The cases shed doubt on the validity of the time limits in the UK
legislation implementing the relevant EU directives.
Examples of possible discrimination in pension schemes include:
disqualifying younger spouses from claiming a survivor's pension;
disqualifying same sex civil partners from claiming a survivor's
pension and different pension rates or employer contributions for
employees of different ages.
The very significant implications for employers of the European
cases Tadeo -v - Versorgungswerk der deutschen in April and Birgit
Bartsch - v - Bosch und Siemens Hausgerate (BSH) Altersfursorge
GmbH in May are only now filtering through.
According to Wedlake Bell these cases open the door to legal
challenges which are likely to be hugely costly for employers.
Employers who have been sticking to the letter of the law now find
that the very basis of that law is unsound. Having thought that
they didn't need to worry about the past, they could now face the
prospect of paying equalised retrospective benefits going back
decades to huge numbers of members and members' partners.
