THE HIGH Court has dismissed proceedings by hundreds of male Civil Service clerical staff who claimed they were discriminated against when a €34 million equal pay deal for women was agreed with the Government in 2003.
The clerical assistants claimed discrimination on grounds of gender, marital status and age on the basis they were excluded from the 2003 agreement which came about as a result of another successful legal challenge on behalf of 2,200 clerical staff for equal pay for women in the service.
The plaintiffs claimed the €34 million settlement, arising out of that previous action, was discriminatory towards them because they had not benefited from it. The Civil Public and Service Union (CPSU) was entrusted with deciding who should benefit, the High Court heard.
Some 1,849 male and female clerical officers who were not part of the original discrimination case brought an appeal to the Labour Court over their exclusion. The group comprised those promoted since 2003 and 869 male clerical assistants who were not invited by the CPSU to apply for equal pay because the original case was only about equal pay for women.
In 2007, the Labour Court determined this group had not established a prima facie case for discrimination.
What was required to be established was that a significantly higher proportion of men than women were disadvantaged by a requirement to have been working in the Civil Service in 2003 when the settlement was made.
The male members of this group then brought High Court proceedings seeking to overturn the Labour Court decision. Mr Justice Daniel O’Keeffe yesterday said there was no error in law by the Labour Court which was an expert administrative tribunal whose decisions the higher courts should be slow to interfere with.