An employment tribunal has found that a part-time lecturer at London-based Capital City College (CCC) was treated less favourably than full-time workers.

Mrs R King had been an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) lecturer at the college from 1989 until 2016, when she was made redundant. She then enrolled on an early years teacher training course at University College London for two years and was hired again by CCC in September 2018 as an hourly-paid lecturer in the School of ESOL under a zero-hours contract.

In the summer of 2021, King agreed with her manager to develop two new ESOL courses and claimed she only received three hours’ pay for the extra work. Including developing the new courses, King carried out other duties that were not part of her contract, such as providing training sessions and class trips.

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While the college accepted that these were beyond those of an hourly-paid lecturer, it argued that because King had an interest in phonics for adults and her previous study at UCL, it meant she did the work voluntarily.

King brought an employment tribunal claim for direct age discrimination, less favourable treatment of part-time workers and a breach of her particulars of employment.

The tribunal found her complaint of less favourable treatment under the Part-Time Workers Regulations 2002 was well founded, as her comparator would have been paid for the curriculum duties and she was not.

She will receive a gross sum of £30,532, comprising over £23,000 in basic pay, £1,370 in sick pay and over £6,000 in employer pension contributions.

The judge stated: “We do not accept that having expertise and skills to do something and having an interest in it makes it voluntary. It still remains that the full-time comparator pro rata’d would have received pay for more hours (six hours per week for non-teaching duties), resulting in more pay than the claimant received for carrying out broadly similar duties. It is the non-payment of these six hours per week which is the less favourable treatment relating to pay.”

A CCC spokesperson said: “This matter is being considered through the appropriate legal process. We have no further comment to make.”

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