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Briefings
Briefings provide in-depth research into specific subjects and major topics within the areas of health and safety, human resources and the environment to help you gain a better understanding of the main issues.
Topics include CDM guidance, fire safety, absence management, Employment Tribunals and environmental management systems.
Briefings are written by Workplace Law consultants and industry experts.
Each briefing is fully downloadable from the Workplace Law website as a PDF.
Equality Act
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The Equality Act 2010 distils and extends existing legislation in order to provide a more consistent and effective legal framework for preventing discrimination. Its key provisions include the following:
- Harmonisation and extension of discrimination law. The prohibition in directly or indirectly discriminating ‘because of a protected characteristic’ will cover age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, race, religion or belief and, in many but not all instances, marriage and civil partnerships. Disability-related discrimination will be replaced with a prohibition on discriminating against a disabled person by treating them unfavourably where that treatment is not a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
- Discrimination by association or based on perception. The ban on discrimination by association will be extended to protect spouses, partners, parents and carers who look after a disabled person or older relative from discrimination.
- Pre-employment health questionnaires. This new provision prohibits employers asking job applicants questions about their health and whether they have a disability.
- Positive action in recruitment and promotion. If this provision is brought in, it would enable employers to pick someone for a job from an under-represented group when they have the choice between two or more applicants who are ‘as qualified’ as each other – but they must not have a policy of doing that in every case.
- Equal pay. The Act incorporates provisions to cover existing equal pay and sex discrimination law, with the aim of reflecting key decisions in equal pay case law and avoiding any gap or overlap between provisions.
- Recommendations by Tribunals. The Act aims to widen Tribunals’ powers to enable wide-ranging recommendations to be made applying across the workplace, such as re-training staff.
- Specific duties for public bodies to adhere to. Ensuring equal opportunities for all backgrounds within the community.
This briefing outlines the key issues.
