Equality

Equality
Equal marriage: The other side of the debate

17th May 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Peter Purton

The House of Commons returns to the Marriage (same sex couples) Bill for its final stages before being despatched to the Lords on May 20-21. The bill came through the committee stage with scarcely a single amendment. Now, the list of amendments being proposed for Monday’s debate is growing by the hour as everyone who had a go at changing the bill during committee is returning for another go.

The TUC approach has always been to welcome the bill: we have supported every step that has improved the position for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people however limited the progress may be. While almost all the publicity has attached itself to the vociferous claims of those who are actually opposed to equality to win exemptions for people who don’t support our equality from having to comply with the law, others have tried – so far without success – to improve it. Amid all the hullaballoo about allowing registrars to ignore the requirements of their jobs and teachers not to have to promote equality for all their pupils, amendments have also been proposed that will strengthen equality and the TUC, many unions and campaigns such as Liberty have been campaigning in their support.

Continue Reading →
Equality
The “rust plating” of UK equality law continues

16th May 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Ben Moxham

The government announced in the Queen’s speech last week that it wants to scrap yet more of the Equality Act. This time it’s the power of Employment Tribunals to make wider recommendations to employers found to have unlawfully discriminated.

These are powers are vitally important. Previously, a tribunal could only address the symptoms and not the causes of workplace discrimination: it could award employees compensation, but not get an employer to change their ways, especially where the victim had left the workplace, as they do in most cases.

So since 2010 tribunals can also recommend that employers take steps such as training managers or rewriting policies of equal opportunities to weed out discrimination, which is often rooted in workplace culture or practices.

The government has advanced two contradictory arguments to scrap this power: that it is onerous and irrelevant. Neither of them has any merit.

Continue Reading →
Equality
Inheritance and pensions wealth

26th April 2013 — Filed under: Equality, Pensions & Investment

Craig Berry

The chart below summarises a particularly interesting statistic released by ONS last week – it was tucked away on page 25 of Pension Trends: Chapter 10 so it’s possible some readers may have missed it!

The chart, which shows the mean pensions saving for 50-64 year olds with at least some savings, emphasises the importance of inherited wealth in the accumulation of pensions wealth. Obviously it is impossible to infer causation, and I suspect that it is largely the correlation of wealthy people being far more likely to inherit things that make them even more wealthy, and wealthy people being far more likely to have access to a good occupational pension.

Continue Reading →
Equality
Now to save the Public Sector Equality Duty

23rd April 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Ben Moxham

The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence sparked a movement in this country aiming to put equalities at the heart of everything we do.

But this government has been steadily trying to unpick that work. It’s been trying to scrap the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s legal mission statement, but looks to have given up after the Lords opposed it again last night – 20 years ago to the day of Stephen’s death.

It also has in its sights on the Public Sector Equality Duty – the legal requirement that all public bodies have “due regard” to equalities in everything they do. It is reviewing this duty, which we have every reason to be worried about, as my colleague Sally Brett has argued.

We surveyed unions for our response to the review. They are absolutely clear: the duty provides a vital spark to get public sector employers to take equalities seriously, especially critical in a climate of deep budget cuts, and a cynical government.

Continue Reading →
Equality
The Daily Mail wrong on religion and belief at work

11th April 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Ben Moxham

Last Sunday the Daily Mail reported that: “Druids, vegans and green activists should be given special treatment at work, according to ‘lunatic’ advice from the equalities watchdog.”

The “lunatic” advice was some fairly straight forward guidance published by Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on 18 February 2013 – 49 days earlier – on how employers should approach a request from employees based on their religion or belief.

The Mail’s main gripe seems to be that the beliefs of “fringe and non-religious groups” and are “put on a par” with Christians when it comes to the workplace. But how do you decide what a fringe group is?

Continue Reading →
Equality
Will shared parental leave solve the dads drought?

20th March 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Ben Moxham

On a weekday my local park is overflowing with mothers pushing prams. Yet dads seem to be an endangered species. Things could be so different. As a British dad taking parental leave in Sweden recently noted: “At the free-of-charge, drop-in play group in Malmö that is my morning refuge, the pappas often outnumber the mammas.”

In Sweden, some 90 percent of fathers take flexible parental leave. In the UK we are sadly scratching around in the single digits, a legacy of “a highly gendered, inflexible approach to parental leave rights”, according to the government.

The costs of this for women here are well known: the disproportionate burden of bringing up kids underpins much of the gender pay gap. And it must surely drive what are alarming levels of maternity discrimination as our friends at Working Families have recently documented.

So we welcome the new shared parental leave rights being introduced in the Children and Families Bill, to be rolled out in 2015. But the incentives in place for fathers are so poor that even the government estimates that only 2 to 8 per cent of dads are likely to take this leave.

Continue Reading →
Equality
IWD 2013: Women taking the hit. In every way

8th March 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Frances O'Grady

Turn on the TV or open any newspaper and reports of attacks on women worldwide keep on coming. The numerous high profile rape and paedophile cases here in the UK, the gang rape cases in India, the recent shooting of Reeva Steenkamp in Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius’ home in South Africa, the continued use of rape as a weapon in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Rochdale and Rotherham sexual abuse scandals… sadly, the list could go on and on. This International Women’s Day, the need to tackle violence against women all over the world is as great as it ever has been.

But in the UK, it is violence against women support organisations that have been first in line for hits to funding: services closed, experienced staff lost, services teetering on the brink of closing their doors just waiting for the next round of funding cuts to finish them off.The death toll taken by domestic violence in the UK is already disgracefully high – two women are killed every single week by current or former partners. How far will this figure rise as the cuts continue to bite? Yet it seems that women and children’s lives are disregarded in the dogged pursuit of deficit reduction.

Continue Reading →
Equality
Inequality: a corrosive social pollutant

17th February 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Lesley Mercer

Sometimes you just need to hear the simple facts rather than a whole load of theory. Enter Richard Wilkinson, co-author of “The Spirit Level”. He was speaking at a European conference in Dublin last week, organised to mark Ireland taking over the presidency of the EU Council of Ministers, at which I represented the TUC.

Richard’s central premise is that the higher the levels of income inequality within a country, the higher the levels of health and social problems. The link is clear, and it applies irrespective of the overall wealth of a country.

Continue Reading →
Equality
Is the Public Sector Equality Duty safe in the Coalition’s hands?

12th February 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Sally Brett

The equality duty in the Equality Act 2010 (s.149) obliges public authorities to have due regard to equality in all that they do. When the duty is properly implemented it should lead to more efficient and effective public service delivery – better serving those most in need and tailoring services to an increasingly diverse population – as well as providing more equal employment opportunities within the public sector.

The duty has its roots in the old race equality duty and the Macpherson Inquiry which found that the Metropolitan Police Service had not properly investigated and prosecuted the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence because of “institutional racism”. As Lord Macpherson said:

“It is incumbent on every institution to examine their policies and the outcomes of their policies and practices to guard against disadvantaging any section of our communities.”

But David Cameron and other coalition ministers now seem to think that this examination and consideration of equality impact will just routinely happen without any statutory obligation.

Continue Reading →
Equality
The Childcare Conundrum

29th January 2013 — Filed under: Equality

Scarlet Harris

Today the Minister for Education and Childcare, Elizabeth Truss, will set out the government’s plans to reform the childcare system. While Truss is right to identify the problems with the UK childcare system, the proposed solution of increasing the ratios of childcare worker to child, is likely to worsen the problem, rather than alleviate it.

Let’s be clear, we have a big problem with childcare in this country. In fact, we have lots of problems with childcare in this country. To name but a few; it’s too expensive; it often doesn’t meet the demands of our long hours work culture and atypical working patterns; it is poorly paid and undervalued and there is little in the way of progression available to those who work in the childcare sector.

Continue Reading →