Fujitsu accused of employment law breaches in redundancies

Posted 12/01/2010

IT services firm Fujitsu has been accused of breaching employment law relating to discrimination when selecting workers for redundancy.

Trade union Unite has raised concerns that female, ethnic minority and part-time workers are routinely being scored lower by the firm when performing assessments relating to potential layoffs.

This comes during union-organised nationwide strike action at the company relating to planned redundancies and pay freezes, which Unite regards as being unnecessary.

Peter Skyte, national officer for IT and communications at the workers’ body, called on the firm to issue a “meaningful response” to findings which he regards as “disturbing”.

He added: “This strengthens our case for a fairer, open and more transparent pay system which we also suspect may be masking potential discrimination.”

Last year, the Equality and Human Rights Commission called on businesses to be more transparent about salaries in order to expose potentially discriminatory gender-related pay gaps.