Equality Enforced In The UK From Today
October 1, 2010 No Comments
The Equality Act comes into force today in the UK.
This means employers will no longer be able to discriminate against people for a host of reasons that they might have before.
- It [the Act] covers age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex (meaning gender) and sexual orientation. Under the act people are not allowed to discriminate, harass or victimise another person because they belong to a group that the Act protects, they are thought to belong to one of those groups or are associated with someone who does.
Other benefits of this new Act are:
–protection for breastfeeding mothers
–allowing claims for direct gender pay discrimination where there is no actual comparator
–prohibiting employers from asking pre-employment health-related questions
–extending protection in private clubs to sex, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity, and gender reassignment
Of course, big business is complaining. They are saying this will make it harder to recover from the recession and think of it as an “extra burden”.
I don’t get it. How is helping someone who is perfectly qualified get a job to work for a company and help that company meet its goals a burden? Is it because they have to make reasonable adjustments and might have to have people with disabilities work for them? Well too bad.
Men, women, and all those in between, regardless of their sexual orientation, disability, or anything else, deserve to work in jobs that they are qualified for, regardless of what the prejudiced big business might think about it.
