Facts

Ms Diakoumis was employed as a cabin crew by Qantas for 27 years, working as Customer Services Manager from 2001.

Ms Diakoumis failed to complete a security clearance form despite being reminded multiple times to do so. She waited until months after the deadline had passed to complete her application.

Before the first of several disciplinary meetings in relation to this, Ms Diakoumis submitted a grievance in relation to alleged less favourable treatment that took place “over the course of several months”.

At the subsequent during the disciplinary hearings, Ms Diakoumis misled the investigation. She was ultimately dismissed on grounds of gross misconduct. 

Ms Diakoumis brought a claim of direct age discrimination. She presented eight separate instances of alleged discrimination that were made against four individuals. They were alleged to have taken place from March 2014 to November 2016. The claims ranged from insufficient correspondence surrounding performance reviews to a dismissive approach taken to Ms Diakoumis’ grievance raised on 26 September 2016. Ms Diakoumis first presented the claims to the Tribunal on 17 August 2017.

Decision

The Tribunal referred to s.123 of the Equality Act 2010. This says that a complaint must either be brought within three months or be within such a time period as the Tribunal thinks just and equitable.

Continuing act

The Tribunal considered whether the incidents complained of represented a continuing act of discrimination.

The Tribunal maintained that because the alleged instances involved treatment by different people, with significant gaps between their incidences, they were “plainly individual events which could not be connected together”. As such all the acts were out of time.  

Just and equitable

The Tribunal noted that Ms Diakoumis offered no evidence as to the reason for the delay and it was only after her employment was terminated that she decided to bring the claims. The Tribunal went on to reason that because Ms Radford, the subject of six out of eight of the claims had subsequently moved to Germany and Ms Rogers, the subject of three out of eight of the claims had retired to Australia the “cogency of the evidence was affected”. This, along with the fact that there was no good reason for delay, was clear evidence that to consider the claims would not be just and equitable.

The Tribunal concluded that it had no jurisdiction to consider the complaints and the claim was dismissed.

The judgment is available here.

Ms T Diakoumis v Qantas Cabin Crew (UK) Ltd: 3327266/2017