"Internet Law Book Reviews" Provided by Rob Jerrard LLB LLM
Pin-Up Girls (Or Boys) At Work,
Stewart v. Cleveland Guest (Engineering) Ltd Employment Appeal Tribunal (1994) The Times, July 6
Examine Your Attitude ... Is Your Office Decorated With Pin- Ups?
Rob Jerrard Written 1995
Are there any pin-up pictures in the office? Since I do not wish to be accused of sexual discrimination, I am addressing both sexes. As an ex-navy man I found it normal to see displayed in some police locker rooms and offices unclad women, many of whom, to determine from their positions, were more athletic than I. Have viewpoints changed since I retired in 1990? Do these young ladies still adorn the walls? Are there pinups in the female changing rooms? Does an international "Gladiator" adorn your room?
Armed Forces' attitudes may have changed. According to Alice Thomson, "cheering the boys who are winning the wars, that's what pinup girls are for." Are the police winning the war against crime, if not, could it be due to a lack of pin-ups? Alice Thomson explains that, "attitudes had changed by the Falklands war. Knave magazine sent a special topless edition out to the Falklands, but what the soldiers really craved were pictures of the Princess of Wales and Selina Scott." .
Chris Horrick, the editor of Soldier (a Forces publication), believes the trend for pin-ups is dying out: "With better telecommunications and more women in the Forces, soldiers have less need of pin-ups to boost their imagination." Evone Paul, of Evone Paul Management (a glamour agency that has been providing page-three models as pin-ups for the armed services for 10 years) disagrees: "Battalions are always writing to adopt a girl. It's a great relationship because it cheers up the men and the girls think they are doing something to help." The Royal Marines are keeping their Miss Globe and Laurel, named after their badge: "It gives a great lift to the boys and the Wrens don't seem to mind", says Sergeant Dieter Loraine, the assistant public relations officer.
It would seem that attitudes have not changed in Cleveland Guest Engineering. The company employ 20 women. In Stewart v. Cleveland Guest (Engineering) Ltd Employment Appeal Tribunal (1994) The Times, July 6, Miss Stewart was employed in the inspection department of a factory which manufactured aeroplane parts and had to work in areas where male employees displayed pictures which she genuinely and reasonably found offensive. The firm distributed its own sexy calendars to clients. Miss Stewart complained to her employers who took no notice. She resigned, claiming that she had been subject to sexual discrimination. The matter came before the Industrial Appeals Tribunal.
Mummery, J said that the complaint was that the employers had subjected Miss Stewart to a detriment by: i) continuing to permit the display of pictures of partially clothed and nude women in her workplace when they knew that the display was offensive to her, and ii) failing to deal with her complaints.
The industrial tribunal accepted that she had been subjected to detriment within the meaning of s.6(2)(b) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, but found that the employers had not treated her less favourably than they would a man in the same circumstances within the meaning of s.1(1)(a).
The decision to dismiss her appeal did not mean that it was never an act of sex discrimination for an employer to allow male employees to display pictures of the kind complained of in the workplace. A decision to allow the appeal would not mean that such an employer would in every case be liable for sex discrimination. The crucial point was that whether or not there had been less favourable treatment of a woman on the ground of her sex must depend on the particular facts of the case. No one was better placed to make a decision on the facts than the industrial tribunal. In this case the industrial tribunal had correctly directed itself on the relevant law, identifying the treatment and asking whether it was less favourable. It had not been shown that it reached a decision which no reasonable tribunal, on a proper appreciation of the facts and law, would have reached. It was crucial that complaints of the present kind were not treated as trivial. They should be taken up, investigated and dealt with in a sympathetic and sensible fashion.
In most cases it should be possible, by a combination of sensitivity and common sense, to arrange matters so that the reasonable wishes of all those concerned were accommodated. If they could not be and proceedings resulted, it was for the tribunal, as the "industrial jury", to hear all the evidence and decide the case. If complaints of sex discrimination - by peimitting the display of pictures of partially clothed and nude women in the workplace - could not be dealt with by a combination of sensitivity and common sense, to accommodate the reasonable wishes of those concerned, the industrial tribunal, as the "industrial jury", was best placed to decide whether the employer had discriminated against the complainant on the ground of her sex.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed the appeal by Miss Stewart, against the dismissal by a Manchester industrial tribunal on July 21, 1993, of her complaint that she had been discriminated against by her employers on the ground of her sex, contrary to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
Thus it is a combination of sensitivity and common sense that ought to prevail. If the reaction of the women in the audience of Gladiators is anything to go by (personally, I don't believe it is), then females like a good body when they see it as much as men.
Unless things have changed that much (shades of mixed changing rooms), the answer may be to allow pin-ups of either sex in places that are not likely to offend. How Cagney and Lacey put up with their "ladies room" (the Can) I will never understand.
Rob Jerrard