Threatened dinner ladies win compensation

The House of Lords has ruled that a group of dinner ladies were threatened with job losses if they filed for gender discrimination charges.

Originally, 500 dinner ladies from St Helens school took the local council to task in 1998, after discovering that they were being paid less than the male team of road sweepers.

Although most of the women accepted a settlement, 36 were not satisfied and made it known that they would be had contacted their solicitors and would be taking the case to an industrial tribunal.

At the hearing, they were awarded £560,000 collectively under laws in Britain and Northern Ireland that demand equal pay for men and women.

St Helens Borough Council had sent the women a warning that their claim could result in redundancies and lack of funding for the schoolchildren's dinners.

Law Lord Neuberger, ruled that these letters were "effectively a threat" to intimidate the claimants into dropping proceedings.

Five Law Lords ruled that the original tribunal ruling was valid after a series of appeals on both sides sent the case from pillar to post.

The 36 dinner ladies could now be awarded up to £10,000 each to compensate for injury to feelings, with aggravated damages.

National officer for the GMB union, Brian Strutton, said: "It was extremely distressing to be told by their employer that their action might lead to cuts, to children going hungry at lunchtime, to colleagues losing their jobs.

"Frankly, it felt like blackmail and it took a lot of courage by them to keep going. St Helens acted wrongly towards these women and now they’ll have to pay up for it."

"All these women did was to exercise their legal rights as low-paid women workers to claim equal pay for the jobs they do for St Helens and for the community, and yet they were victimised by their employer as a result."

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