Workers could soon sue over workplace 'fattism'

Employees who are overweight could soon have new powers that will enable them to sue members of staff who discriminate against them because of their weight, a judge has said.

Philip Rostant, a judge specialising in employment law and National Training Director at the Employment Tribunals of England and Wales, said implementing a law could protect those of “non-ideal weight” from discrimination.

This new law would mean using terms such as “fatty”, or denying employment or promotion opportunities to people on the basis of their weight, would bring similar penalties to homophobia or racial prejudice in the workplace.

Rostant, writing in an academic paper alongside Tamara Hervey, Professor of European Union Law at Sheffield University, said: “People of non-ideal weight (overweight or severely underweight) are subjected to discrimination, in the workplace and elsewhere, based on attitudinal assumptions and negative inferences... such as that they are insufficiently self-motivated to make good employees.