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= “Discrimination at Work Essay | Business”;
$description =”Business Essay – Perhaps one of the best known pieces of legislation is the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)”;
$subject = “Business”;
Discrimination Essay
Perhaps one of the best known pieces of legislation is the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which has recently been amended, so that the exemption for small employers – previously applicable to organisations with 15 or fewer employees – has been removed so that all organisations are covered, regardless of size. And two new specific types of discrimination have been introduced: “direct discrimination” and “harassment”. The new Amended DDA Regulations extend the scope of protection provided by the DDA in several ways, some of the most important of which are those placing greater emphasis on employers to provide additional training, mentoring and support to ensure that disabled people can undertake work for their employer. As such, and Human Resources (HR) department must be very careful that, as part of their selection processes, they do not rule out a disabled person on grounds that are directly linked to their disability, and could otherwise be altered by the employer. (Grady, 2005).
One example of how a firm can be successful in this is the Court of Appeal decision in Wilding v British Telecommunications Plc, which demonstrated that if a business makes adjustments for disability, it is not liable under the Act. This case involved a man who worked for BT for twenty nine years, but sustained a severe back injury after which he was able to continue working for several years in the same role, but with consideration given to his injury. However, his injury worsened over time, and he was subsequently dismissed. A tribunal held that such a termination classified as discrimination under the terms of the DDA, and thus was not fair dismissal. The tribunal also held that an employer should have made reasonable enquiries, both medical and personal, to see if he could continue working on a part-time basis. Before the hearing, and after appealing against the discrimination decision, BT offered to re-recruit the employee on a part-time basis. He declined this offer, and gave ten reasons for making this decision, one of which was that his confidence and trust in BT had been harmed by their treatment of him. The Court of Appeal upheld the view that he had acted unreasonably in refusing to return to work, and so found in favour of BT.
The Information and Consultation Regulations (ICER), which came into force on 6 April 2005, give employees in larger organisations – initially only those with at least 150 employees – the right to be consulted about business issues, including prospects for employment, substantial changes in work organisation, selections for redundancy, and contractual relations. Under the new ICER, employers’ human resource departments have been advised to seize the initiative and set up a consultative body as soon as possible. This has been shown to be neither time-consuming nor cumbersome, and many employers have been surprised by the rewards they reap from said consultation. (Grady, 2005) An important point to remember is that they allow no legal fight for trade unions to request, or be involved in, new consultation procedures. The regulations provide only for consultation with elected employee representatives. Employers are, of course, free to involve trade unions in their arrangements, but there are tactical opportunities for employers who feel that their unions do not represent the whole of their workforce or who wish to use greater information and consultation arrangements to reduce pressure for statutory trade union recognition. (Mordue, 2005)
If employers fail to comply, with these regulations, employees can ask the CAC to proceed to decide the bargaining unit, even before the 20-day period for negotiations on this point has expired. The CAC also has new powers to ask employers and unions to provide information that will assist in determining issues under the recognition procedure, such as details relating to union membership and the likelihood of the workers supporting recognition. The rationale is that greater sharing of information will increase the possibility of disputes that might arise during the recognition procedure being resolved by agreement. (Mordue, 2005) However, provided that the consultation process is followed, and employee wishes are taken into account, the ICER potentially allows employers and HR departments to make the redundancy process much smoother, as employees who enter into consultation will see the full financial reasoning for the decisions, and thus will find them harder to oppose.
One final piece of legislation is the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, which may affect the human resource practice of offering early retirement There is nothing to stop employees from electing to go earlier than the new statutory retirement age of 65 or the employer’s own objectively justified age, but HR departments will have to ensure that they have clear evidence that such employees elected to go voluntarily and did so knowing that they could have asked to stay. (Williams, 2005) Also, if employers look to retire employees at a time when redundancies are being made, they could face unfair dismissal claims, with individuals arguing that the true reason for their selection was redundancy, not retirement.
Equally, when selecting people for redundancy, many employers adopt criteria linked to length of service, but using “last in, first out” as a criterion will disadvantage younger employees with relatively little service: there is likely to be a tribunal decision on whether this practice can be justified. Skills matrices, which are now widely used to select individuals for redundancy, also need careful consideration. In principle, they measure the skills that an employer may legitimately be looking to retain. But the assessment must actually measure key skills. For example, giving excessive weight to 20 years’ experience in a particular role could be challenged because there is unlikely to be a real difference between the skill set of an employee with 10 years’ experience and one with twice that amount, and the 20-year criterion again disadvantages younger employees. (Williams, 2005)
Discrimination References
1. Grady, C. (2005) Employment law. Caterer & Hotelkeeper; Vol. 194, Issue 4357, p. 45.
2. Mordue, C. (2005) The state of the union. Employers Law; Mar2005, p.8.
3. Williams, A. (2005) Laws Target Redundant Practices. People Management; Vol. 11, Issue 17, p. 24.