Employment Law – Anti-Discrimination Legislation

Discrimination begins from the racist belief that diverse groups of people are different and uses that as the foundation of a justification in which to treat people differently because of their race, gender, sexuality or disability. There has been a reasonable effort by legislators and employers to remove discriminatory behaviour from workplaces of the UK, in a bid to show that people are judged solely on what they can do rather then who they are.

Under the Race Relations Act of 1976 it is deemed unlawful to use discrimination or prejudice of a racial nature at any point in the employment process. The Equal Pay Act of 1970 was put in place to try and redress the balance between the pay of men and women. The Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 and the Disability Discrimination act of 1995 have both made it illegal to use discriminatory practices during the process of application, training and promotion, provision of goods and services and dismissals and redundancy.

However, in 2010 the Equality Act sought to bring all these various thread of legislation together under the banner of anti-discrimination, added to the provisions involving discrimination against peoples race, gender or disability were also added provisions making it illegal to discriminate in the employment process on the grounds of age, sexuality or religion.

It is now unlawful in the UK, except in situations where people can provide ‘reasonable justification’ for their discriminatory actions, for an employer to use anything other then a person’s skills and qualifications when they judge their suitability for an employment vacancy. If it is discovered that an employer has failed in their statutory duty to ensure that the workplace is free from discrimination, then they can be called before the Employment Tribunal and may have to pay the employee compensation.