Subsequent cases have shown the courts willing to go further and to dis-apply sections within statutes that seem clearly to conflict with EU law, even without a reference to the ECJ. The most powerful example of this was the House of Lords' decision in R v Secretary of State for Employment, ex parte Equal Opportunities Commission [1995] 1 AC 1. This case involved the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978, a UK statute that required part-time workers to work for five years before they received redundancy and unfair dismissal compensation rights. (Full-time workers only had to complete two years). Part-time workers were largely female and thus the rules were considered indirectly discriminatory to women (contrary to the EU Treaty, art 141 giving women equal pay rights). The House of Lords granted a declaration to that effect. As a result, industrial tribunals in the UK subsequently ignored the wording of the Act and granted part-time workers compensation rights if they had completed two years employment. Thus the Act, although remaining on the statute book for some time before its eventual amendment to comply with the Lords' ruling, was a dead-letter as far as the five-year qualifying period for part-timers was concerned. The effect of this decision was more far reaching than Factortame, as part of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 was completely suspended for all, whereas in Factortame (No 2) the Merchant Shipping Act 1998 was only suspended for EU nationals.