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news
Jess Varnish celebrates a gold medal and world record (© Dene Percy)Jess Varnish fails in attempt to prove she was employee of British Cycling and UK Sport
Jess Varnish has lost her employment case where she had argued that she was in effect an employee of British Cycling and UK Sport. Had the former Great Britain track sprinter won, the case could have had huge ramifications for the way in which Olympic athletes are funded.
Varnish was dropped from the national squad in April 2016 with then technical director Shane Sutton explaining at the time: “There is no point carrying on and wasting UK Sport’s money on someone who is not going to medal going forward.”
Varnish complained that she was told by Sutton to “go and have a baby” after being dropped, triggering investigations into Sutton and also the wider culture of British Cycling.
Claiming that she was unfairly discriminated against, Varnish resorted to a tribunal in a bid to establish that she was an employee of British Cycling and UK Sport when she received funding and not an independent contractor.
The BBC reports that after several weeks of deliberation, Judge Ross ruled in favour of British Cycling and UK Sport. They had argued that the deal was more akin to a university grant. Had he found in Varnish’s favour, it would have cleared the way for her to sue for wrongful dismissal.
British Cycling said the verdict underlined that its relationship with riders, “is not one of employer-employee but that of a service provider supporting talented and dedicated athletes to achieve their best.”
A spokesperson said: “We very much regret that Jess was advised to pursue the route of an employment tribunal when we had made significant efforts to reach a resolution which all parties regarded as equitable.”
Acknowledging previous cultural issues at the organisation, they added: “Thanks to a lot of hard work by staff and riders the culture of the Great Britain cycling team is changed for the better since Jess first raised her concerns and we hope to welcome her to the national cycling centre as we would any other rider who has represented Great Britain.”
Currently, the athlete performance awards of up to £28,000, which are made by UK Sport, are tax-exempt and do not give employment rights to the athletes who benefit from them.
Had the judge found in Varnish’s favour, the funding body would potentially have had to pay National Insurance and pensions contributions and also cover backdated claims. The additional financial obligations could have led to hundreds of athletes seeing a reduction in their grants or missing out altogether.
A spokesperson for UK Sport said: "The verdict provides reassurance that the relationship between UK Sport, national governing bodies and athletes is as it has always intended to be, which is to provide the means and support for talented athletes to achieve their dreams of realising success at the Olympic/Paralympic Games.
“Whilst this verdict did not find Jessica Varnish to be an employee or worker of UK Sport or British Cycling, we have already taken action to strengthen the duty of care and welfare provided to athletes and are ensuring that avenues for raising any concerns are effective and appropriate.
“It also gives us confidence that the structure of the relationship between other national governing bodies, their athletes and UK Sport can continue in a similar way but we will reflect on the concerns that were raised through this case when finalising our future strategy for post Tokyo.
“We regret for Jessica Varnish, her partner and her family that pursuing this case was considered the best course of action she had to address the concerns she felt she experienced as an athlete on the British Cycling world class programme. We hope Jess feels proud of the success she achieved through cycling and we wish her all the very best for the future.”
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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10 comments
"Was Varnish dropped because she challenged authority, rather than because her performance didn't meet expectations? " - [OldRidgeback]
Possibly a bit of both? With the need to meet expectations being heightend by the challenging of Authority & then a bit of a 'feed-back-loop' between the two states of affairs.....
Was the root cause of all this the fact that she wasn't good enough anymore and couldn't accept it; sure some aspects haven't been well handled? I'm sure we've all had the sorry you haven't made the grade/you should have done better/if you try harder you may have a chance etc (delete as appropriate) conversations. Perhaps a better measure of someone is how you take that response, 'dust yourself off', learn from it and move on; welcome to 'life'. Not accepting it and having a 'temper tantrum' isn't going to achieve anything.
Sad for her and state-funded athletes. Hope it was no win no fee
I wonder if the 'you can go and have a baby' comment was taken out of context to promote her concerns.
If anyone actually said it.
Well we won't know if someone actually said it. But having spoken with Shanaze Reade, I picked up the message that there was a lot of dissatisfaction amongst the riders as to how they were being dealt with.
Was Varnish dropped because she challenged authority, rather than because her performance didn't meet expectations? I suspect the former rather than the latter.
There are ways of challenging authority and ways of challenging authority. I understand the ways that I can legitimately challenge the authority of my department head in a constructive and reasonable manner and the ways in which I can do it that will most likely lead to my needing to sign on pretty soon ... regardless of whether my performance is up to expectations or not.
If the argument is that it is different for her in that position because she is not an employee ... well, she was arguing that she was, so that makes no sense.
Having said that, I worked for many years in an industry that uses a lot of self employed representatives and even they would have found it difficult to continue if they challenged the authority of the company in inappropriate ways.
And ... even if you challenge authority in appropriate ways, doing it too much still makes you difficult to work with and at some point will lead to consequences.
I am not saying any of that is what happened to Jess Varnish, but losing a position because you dared to challenge authority doesn't always make you a noble victim.
Yep it's true that there are different ways of challenging authority. There are strong suggestions that the former head coach was a difficult person with some entrenched attitudes.
In the past I worked for someone with some very old-fashioned ideas, with a strong dictatorial streak and who hated to be challenged. I left because I felt I had to. I do wonder about the atmosphere the riders had to cope with. As I said, I met Shanaze reade (at a training session she ran) and she dropped some hints that all had not been well within the camp.
i
I seem to remember there was some context in so much as her having complained about having had to put her life on hold to pursue a career as an elite sportswoman and that she couldn't keep doing that as she wanted to have a family at some point. She was then dropped allegedly for failing to meet performance targets and was told 'to go and have a baby.' If that was the case I'd say the phrase has been deliberately weaponised for her own ends albeit the coach should probably have said something more along the lines of 'crack on with your life'. N.B. Can't find the actual article where I read it as it was as the initial story broke.
Edit: Found the quote: 'How many more times can I keep putting my life on hold, making these choices for my career, if it’s not going to pay off, through no fault of our own?' and link to the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/02/jess-varnish-gb-coaches-ri...
Tribunal apart at least she looks like she's getting on with her life as she's now expecting a baby.
At least on the bright side for her, and all the other athletes funded this way, they don't need to worry about HMRC sending them a tax bill for outstanding income tax for their time as a funded athletes with BC.