People Resourcing and Discrimination Laws in United Kingdom - Essay Example

? Equality at Work Contents Contents 2 United Kingdom Discrimination Law 4 Discrimination based on Race 4 Discrimination based on Sex 4 Discrimination owing to Disability 5 Discrimination owing to Old Age 5 Discrimination in regards to Religion 5 Assessment of the Effectiveness of the United Kingdom Discrimination Law 6 Discrimination in Relation to Disability 6 Discrimination in Regards to Sexual Oriented People 8 Discrimination Law in regards to Sexual Harassment 8 Discrimination Law in regards to Religious Tolerance 9 Discrimination Law in regards to Gender Issues and Equal Opportunities 10 People Resourcing and Discrimination Laws 11 Process of Enhancing the Effectiveness of the United Kingdom Discrimination Law 12 References 14 United Kingdom Discrimination Law The Discrimination Law in United Kingdom that tends to bring about equality in the workplace works in parallel to the Equality Act of 2010. It tends to indicate discrimination at the workplace on the following sub-heads. Discrimination based on Race The Equality Act of 2010 condemns an employer who tends to discriminate between the employees based on racial differences. Racial differences can be observed between the different people in regards to their skin colour or in regards to their native birth place. Herein an employer who tends to render lower wages to an employee owing to racial differences or maltreats a staff because of his or her skin colour is rightly condemned by the law. The law states that an employer is required to render positive action to such staffs that belong to the under-represented communities and thus has needs different from the normal community. The employer is required to safeguard such people from being victimised and should render moral and professional support. People subject to such discriminatory acts can directly confront with their immediate superiors or can take help of tribunals pertaining to employment (Directgov, n.d.). Discrimination based on Sex The Equality Act of 2010 also condemns the discriminatory acts in the workplace that tends to create differences of opportunities among men and women along all levels of an organisation and in regards to the various human resource functions. Thus men and women are required to gain the same opportunity to grow with the concern professionally, financially and personally. Victims of sexual discrimination are required to firstly bring such acts in the eyes of their superiors and also they can take help from employment tribunals if the matter does escalate (Directgov-a, n.d.). Discrimination owing to Disability Similarly the law also condemns the discriminatory act of the employer on the part of an individual suffering from permanent or temporary disability. Herein also the law requires the victimised individual to have an informal course of talk with the employer in regards to such discriminatory acts. The victim can also take recourse to the support of employment tribunals through the advisory and arbitration services of the United Kingdom government (Directgov-b, n.d.). Discrimination owing to Old Age The law also focuses on rendering protection to the old age people who are still working in business organisations from being discriminated. Herein the law safeguards the old people from the acts of the employer in penalising the old people through discriminatory redundancy policies by making them turn jobless. Further after April 2011 the age of retirement has been totally abolished for which a person can continue working a concern till he or she desires to and henceforth cannot be made redundant (Directgov-c, n.d.). Discrimination in regards to Religion The law tends to safeguard individuals working in organisations from being discriminated against his or her religious beliefs. The employer cannot forcibly require an individual to abstain from wearing religious clothes and ornaments and in abstaining to take to foods against one’s religious belief. Such people who feel victimised by such discriminatory activities can take resort to the arbitrations and advisory board for gaining needful suggestions (Directgov-d, n.d.; Liebmann and Beckett, 1998, p.183). These are the some of the different discriminations that are outlined by the Equality Act of 2010 in United Kingdom and mentions the different modes through which the victims of such discrimination can gain due support and help. The paper now proceeds to analyse the effectiveness of the above discussed discriminatory safeguarding legislations in the light of the current social and business situation. Assessment of the Effectiveness of the United Kingdom Discrimination Law Discrimination in Relation to Disability The effectiveness of the discrimination laws in regards to United Kingdom can be analysed based on the different separate legislations issued from time to time. Like it is found that the discrimination legislation issued by the United Kingdom government pertaining to disability during 1995 does not render proper safeguard to people suffering from AIDS. Herein the legislation does not render proper support to individual infected with the deadly AIDS Virus unless otherwise the symptoms are fully exposed. Further the discrimination based on disability also does not render support to the family members of the HIV infected person. Moreover the discrimination legislation pertaining to disability fails to render support to people working in small business organisations having number of staffs 15 or less and also to people working in government or statutory bodies of the United Kingdom government. It is also held that that the discrimination legislation in regards to disabled persons fails to recognise that certain disabled persons on being left to work on their own start developing their own competencies to perform. Thus a person considered fully disabled by the employer may happen to cope up with the environment at a later stage to render productivity and hence must not be discriminated against. Further the discrimination legislation pertaining to disability happens to project out a prescriptive list of symptoms that need to be identified in regarding a person to be disabled. Thus it fails to highlight any exclusive condition apart from the list rendered where the person can be rendered support as obtained by a disabled person under the act. In one of the cases the victim, a woman was found to largely hurt her with scissors and other harmful kitchen chemicals and was taken to be a case of mental impairment. However the case was not taken as substantially harmful and decrepit enough to render any potential obstacle to the performance of daily activities and henceforth the person was not taken to be disabled under the list identified by the legislation brought out. Similarly the legislation pertaining to discrimination is also found to fall short in defining what is taken to be normal in regards to daily set of activities. The legislation holds that activities are evaluated to be normal based on a normal observational framework such that when an employee fails to conduct such normal set of activities he or she is held to be incapable. Reasons for such incapability are to be evaluated based on the prescribed set of conditions as outlined in the legislation before conferring one to be disable. However some employees are taken in an organisation to perform some specialised set of activities as a normal routine. However such specialised set of activities fail to be taken as normal daily set of activities by the legislation in that mere observation does not classify such. Again such specialized set of activities require a person to be highly capable enough in terms of physical conditions to adequately fulfil such. Thus in case of a pilot conducting a specialised set of activities of flying aircrafts the need to identify colours rightly is taken to be a crucial need. However the incapability of such individual in identifying colours or colour blindness makes one difficult to carry out the daily routine of flying airplanes and thereby turns one disable. This sense of disability in such individual does not find position in regards to the legislation on discrimination relating to disability and hence he is considered fit for the daily routine jobs. Again a person working in a manufacturing firm employed to carry heavy loads of tools and machineries owing to a sudden disability may fail to carry out such duties. Disability in regards to such individual may go unnoticed in that the person reflects the capability in carrying light items. Thus the normal routine of activities observed can be much more than what is merely observed and thereby the legislation pertaining to discrimination based on disability fails to hold good. Thus the legislation pertaining to discrimination pertaining to disability has several flaws in which the person identified as disable and subjected to protective measures may happen to not need such at the cost of one who has turned really disabled. Thus such legislation needs much medical support and amendment is needed in the list rendered as to the symptoms that are held to evaluate a person to be disabled. More rationalistic set of ideas need to flow to rightly identify the disabled individual from the other non-disabled people and thereby design the right amount of protective measures for them (Waterman and Bell, 2003, p.6-9). Discrimination in Regards to Sexual Oriented People Again the discrimination legislations in United Kingdom fail to render support to the sexually oriented individuals from acts of discrimination. Thus the people who fall under the sexually oriented class of gays and lesbians are held to be still subjected to discrimination. Thus it is found that the legislations of discrimination in operation in United Kingdom are not totally effective in running down the discriminatory activities of the employers in business organisations. Especially when the discrimination turns out on people suffering from diseases like AIDS or belonging to a sexually oriented class such legislations fall short in rendering needed protection (Mansfield and Bowers, 2005, p.636-642; Smith and Thomas, 2007, p.326). Discrimination Law in regards to Sexual Harassment Again in evaluating the legislation pertaining to sexual discrimination it is found that the law passed in United Kingdom firstly fails to state that harassment made on sexual grounds is a gender based discrimination. Secondly in cases made on harassment made on sexual grounds the victim failed to receive salient judgement where it was stated that the employer cannot be penalised for being the subject of continuous provocation. Further the sexual harassment complaints dealt under the sexual discrimination legislations also desired to reconfirm whether the employer had any previous knowledge of the sexual harassment activity going on at the workplace. It also required understanding that what special activities were carried out by the employer in order to cease the growth of sexual harassment activities in the concern. In that also the courts proclaimed confusion for the legislation failed to signify or state any such activity as required on the part of the employer to help reduce the occurrence of such sexual harassment events in the workplace (Evans, 1999, p.538-540; Kail and Cavanaugh, 2007, p.469). Discrimination Law in regards to Religious Tolerance In regards to the legislation brought about for religious discrimination it is held that that the policies of the company may not reflect obligation to different set of religious rules and regulations. However in that the company possess a set of diversified workforce therefore it is required by the employer to honour the religious sentiments of the different people and thereby protect the people from being discriminated by others. The rules of the statute are found to be quite flexible in regards to the existence of indirect discrimination where the employer becomes able to show that such discrimination was made for the interests of the company and had little or no personal impact. Thus the legislative rules does not reinstate that the employer is required to provide a room for the people to do their prayer service or abide by all the demands in regards to fasting and clothing requirements. However in the interest of the people the employer can help them in meeting their religious interests in wearing occasional garments along with abstaining or taking certain food items. Similarly the employer has the ultimate prerogative in deciding whether to give leaves to the staffs on certain religious occasions. Here the employer can gain the benefit of indirect discrimination for the debate can be raised as to loss of one productivity day for granting leaves to a major section of the staffs. Herein however the regulations excite both religious and sexual harassment in that it insists the staffs to take baths and change in common areas where their religion forbids it. Such acts are held by the legislation in regards to indirect discrimination that in turn invites harassment of such religious minded individuals in the workplace. Thus discrimination laws in regards to religious issues in the workplace though existent in United Kingdom are flexible enough to cause the rise of discrimination acts in the work environment (ACAS, 2005, p. 18-24; Leighton and Proctor, 2006, p.47). Discrimination Law in regards to Gender Issues and Equal Opportunities Even with the existence of equal payment regulations in United Kingdom women are still found to be the victims of under employment and under payment policies practiced in the different business organisations. Thereby it reflects a clear sense of discrimination on the part of women being suppressed by the male communities in developed countries like United Kingdom. Much evidence can be had in regards to women working in part time ventures where the practice of indirect discrimination by the employers is quite understandable. The employers thus let the women part time workers get only a 59 percent of the amount their male counterparts receive working on a hourly basis. In addition to their jobs not being valued properly the women are also largely underrepresented in the different employment tribunals held in United Kingdom. A statistics reveal that around 30 percent of the seats in the employment tribunals are only occupied by women. The above conditions reveal that discrimination regulations in regards to employment and pay practices for women in United Kingdom are still quite ineffective in rendering the right justice (Hepple, Coussey and Choudhury, 2000, p.13, 90). People Resourcing and Discrimination Laws Discrimination legislations are quite effective in regards to people resourcing activities in United Kingdom. In United Kingdom the discrimination legislations render priority to the issues regarding the employment of female staffs and also other part time employees. The legislations provides safeguard to the discrimination activities that hinder the accessibility of the female and part time workers to employee rights and benefits (Taylor, 2005, p.36). The government of United Kingdom rightly condemns both direct and indirect forms of discrimination activities in regards to recruitment of employees pertaining to diverse race, ethnicity, nationality and gender orientation backgrounds. Equality of opportunity in the organisation is endeavoured to be restored by such legislations curbing dominance by one specific racial or ethnic group. This practice of rendering equal opportunity to grow with the organisation to people belonging to diverse groups is held by CIPD to help the business organisation gain both on productivity and profitability through increased performance and innovation (French and Rumbles, 2010, p.184). Several organisations in United Kingdom are working on some special recruitment programs to help in gaining skilled labour force from reputed institutions and social bodies. The following graph would reflect the percentage in which graduates from different institutions are absorbed by the different sectors. Figure 1 (Source: CIPD, 2007, p.8-9) Process of Enhancing the Effectiveness of the United Kingdom Discrimination Law The process of enhancing the effectiveness of the discrimination law pertaining to disability can be made by changing its focus from the emergence of impairment in the physical and mental system of the employees. The focus being changed would help the discrimination law to take the help of adequate medical evidence on the right identification of disability and thereby rendering positive action to the victims. Thus the discrimination act pertaining to disability coupled with the right medical support and changing its focus from the stereotyped list of impairments would be able to signify the right disabled persons in need of positive action. The perception level of normal daily activities should be enhanced to take into hold of specialised ventures such that the incapability of an individual to perform the stated task can be easily identified and needed support rendered. Again the focus must be enhanced to render protection to the sexually oriented groups of people who are considered underrepresented in the organisations. In regards to discrimination based on sex and gender special focus must be rendered by the employer in bridging the income gaps of both the male and female employee groups and also to uphold the position of the women in the tribunals. Moreover the discrimination law also desires that the employers to become more conscious about protecting the dignity of the female employees in the concern. The law requires the employers to pay a tolerant ear to the problems of the female employees where they had been sexually harassed and thereby to take positive directions on such note. Similarly in regards to religious discrimination the law requires the employer to work in the best interest of maintaining effective positive relationship with the employees. Thus the employer is required to create spaces for the employees where they could pray, take bath and change in seclusion and thereby help to avoid any type of confusion and feelings of being discriminated. The employer at the very outset can work to maintain a record of the religion to which the employee belongs to and also inform the employee the reason why such records are being maintained. It is held that such practice would eventually help the employer in getting learned about the employees in the concern and thereby working accordingly in the best interest of the people. References ACAS. (2005). Religion or Belief and the Workplace. Employment Equality Legislation 2003. [pdf]. Available At: http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/f/l/religion_1.pdf. [Accessed on March 7, 2012]. CIPD. (2007). Annual survey report 2007. [Pdf]. Available At: http://www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/746F1183-3941-4E6A-9EF6-135C29AE22C9/0/recruitretntsurv07.pdf. [Accessed on March 16, 2012]. Directgov. (No date). Racial discrimination. [Online]. Available At: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/ResolvingWorkplaceDisputes/DiscriminationAtWork/DG_10026667. [Accessed on March 7, 2012]. Directgov-a. (No date). 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