Since 29 July 2013, anyone unfairly sacked or discriminated against at work has had to fork out a ridiculous £1200 in fees to get their day in court. Has this extreme form of credit card justice deterred claimants? The Ministry of Justice was forced to release early data on the question last week, presumably ahead…
With barely a whimper, the report of the review into the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) was finally released late last week. The good news is that the government has decided not to scrap the PSED, instead parking that issue in some very long grass. Long may it grow. This is a minor victory for…
Today the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) have predicted that as many as one million UK workers could be on zero-hours contracts – four times the official estimate. For workers on such contracts, life can be painfully uncertain. If you get no work for a week or two, getting a mortgage, or arranging…
I’ve got a new post over at left foot forward debunking the many myths used to justify the employment tribunal fees that came into effect yesterday. As a post-script to that blog, check out this report from today’s mirror: Nearly half of bosses in 1,000 firms – some 47% – say it will put off…
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 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…
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…
Agency workers can be badly exploited by labour providers operating in the shadows of the British economy. I can’t think of a more tragic example than when 23 Chinese cockle pickers working under a rogue gangmaster drowned in Morecambe Bay in 2004. The incident galvanised a broad coalition of unions, supermarkets, industry operators and politicians…
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.”…
A: One of them has a policy commitment to purchase goods that haven’t been made by child labour or by workers whose rights are abused. The other is the UK’s Department for International Development… boom boom. DFID has just published its new Statement of Priorities and Expectations for suppliers, which bizarrely fails to include respect…