Fat shaming & disability harassment. Stephen Hurley reports
If an employer allows “fat shaming” in the workplace, they may now be at risk of a claim of unlawful disability harassment.
In Bickerstaff v Butcher NIIT/92/14 (unreported) Neil Bickerstaff worked for Randox Laboratories Ltd in Northern Ireland. He had a body mass index (BMI) of 48.5 (a person with a BMI of 30 or over is classed by the World Health Organisation as being obese). On numerous occasions he suffered abusive comments by a number of work colleagues including being called a “fat bastard”.
Bickerstaff ultimately resigned. The Tribunal sitting in Belfast found that he had been a victim of unlawful harassment under the Disability Discrimination 1995 (the law in England & Wales now being contained in the Equality Act 2010).
In an important decision, albeit at first instance, the Tribunal concluded that he was disabled. A person has a disability if he has “a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on his ability to carry out normal day to day activities”. In Bickerstaff’s case, he suffered from gout. On
