EXCLUSIVE
An unemployed 50-year-old woman has slammed the “vindictive and threatening” National Union of Teachers (NUT) after being forced to withdraw her claim of sex discrimination against it.
Ruth Selo also slated the union’s recruitment process as “a catalogue of HR malpractice” after her written job offer was withdrawn two weeks before she was due to start work.
Last week, Selo was forced to drop her tribunal claim against the teachers union because she could not afford to pay the escalating costs if she lost.
Selo told Personnel Today: “The NUT has been vindictive and threatening throughout. It has insisted on asking for costs, and I simply do not have the money.”
But a spokeswoman for the NUT denied the allegations: “It is very rare to ask for costs but we think it was justified as the union does not think [Selo] had a valid case,” she said.
Selo claimed she was offered a job of part-time regional solicitor at the NUT’s Haywards Heath, West Sussex, office in May, accepted it and resigned from her job.
Two weeks before she was due to start at the NUT, the job offer was withdrawn. It is understood that her references had comprised just a few lines.
Selo insisted there was nothing in the references to justify withdrawing the job offer and filed a claim for breach of contract and sex discrimination.
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She claims that by only accepting references from her most recent employers, the NUT was discriminating against women of a certain age, who were more likely than men to have temporary positions on their CV because they have taken time off owing to childcare responsibilities.
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