Tag: Equality Act

New protections from sexual harassment come into force

Employers now have a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment and create a safe working environment

  • New duty under the Equality Act 2010 will require employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of their employees.
  • New guidance for employers on how they can protect their staff.
  • New measure comes into force as further legislation goes through Parliament to boost economic growth by tackling poor productivity, insecure work and broken industrial relations.

From Saturday 26 October, employees can expect their employers to take reasonable steps to protect them from sexual harassment as a new duty comes into force.

Employers now have a duty to anticipate when sexual harassment may occur and take reasonable steps to prevent it. If sexual harassment has taken place, an employer should take action to stop it from happening again. This sends a clear signal to all employers that they must take reasonable preventative steps against sexual harassment, encourage cultural change where necessary, and reduce the likelihood of sexual harassment occurring.

Anneliese Dodds, Minister for Women and Equalities, said: “This government is determined to ensure that we not only Make Work Pay; we also make work safe.

“Too many people feel uncomfortable or unsafe at work due to sexual harassment and we are putting every effort into putting a stop to it. The preventative duty is an important step on the journey, and we will continue to improve protections for workers until everyone can thrive.

“The Equality Act provides legal protections against sexual harassment in the workplace. Despite this, persistent reports and revelations in recent years indicate that it remains a problem. So from today employers will be required to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment of their employees.

“We will strengthen this duty through our Employment Rights Bill, which had its Second Reading this week, and will boost economic growth by tackling poor productivity, insecure work and broken industrial relations.”

Guidance for employers on developing appropriate plans and policies has been published by the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

This includes what behaviour needs to be addressed and how complaints should be handled, to help employers protect their staff and avoid tribunals.

Urgent action required to tackle ‘endemic’ misogyny faced by women in the music industry, committee warns

Women pursuing careers in music face “endemic” misogyny and discrimination in a sector dominated by self-employment and gendered power imbalances, Westminster’s Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) has warned.

WEC’s ‘Misogyny in Music’ report laid bare a “boys’ club” where sexual harassment and abuse is common, and the non-reporting of such incidents is high. Victims who do speak out struggle to be believed or may find their career ends as a consequence.

Despite increases in representation, women encounter limitations in opportunity, a lack of support and persistent unequal pay; these issues are intensified for women facing intersectional barriers, particularly racial discrimination, the report found.

Female artists are routinely undervalued and undermined, endure a focus on their physical appearance in a way that men are not subjected to, and have to work far harder to get the recognition their ability merits.

Making a series of strong and wide-ranging recommendations, the cross-party committee of MPs called on ministers to take legislative steps to amend the Equality Act to ensure freelance workers have the same protections from discrimination as employees and bring into force section 14 to improve protections for people facing intersectional inequality.

It also recommended the Government should legislate to impose a duty on employers to protect workers from sexual harassment by third parties, a proposal the Government initially supported and then rejected last year.

Both the music industry and Government, WEC said, should increase investment in diverse talent and make more funding available to the schemes that support it. Pathways to careers for women working in the sector must improve it added, particularly in male-dominated areas such as Artists and Repertoire (A&R), sound engineering and production.

Record labels should commit to regular publication of statistics on the diversity of their creative rosters, with all organisations of more than 100 employees required to publish data on the diversity of their workforce and gender and ethnicity pay gaps.

On non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), the report cited distressing testimonies of victims “threatened into silence”, with WEC urging ministers to prohibit the use of non-disclosure and other forms of confidentiality agreements in cases involving sexual abuse, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, bullying or harassment, and discrimination relating to a protected characteristic.

The Government, WEC recommended, should consider a retrospective moratorium on NDAs for those who have signed them relating to the issues outlined.

The report also called for strengthened requirements for industry areas where harassment and abuse are known to take place. It recommended that studios, music venues and the security staff that attend them should be subject to licensing requirements focused on tackling sexual harassment and that managers of artists should also be licensed.

WEC supported the Office for Students’ proposed new condition of registration and potential sanction for educational settings aimed at improving protections for students and urged the OfS to “implement its proposals swiftly and to enforce them robustly”.

The establishment of a single, recognisable body, the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority (CIISA) WEC’s report concluded will help to shine a light on unacceptable behaviour in the music industry and may reduce the risk of further harm.

But the committee cautioned it is “not a panacea for all of the problems in the industry” and “time will tell whether it has the powers required to drive the changes needed”.

Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Rt Hon Caroline Nokes MP said: “Women’s creative and career potential should not have limits placed upon it by ‘endemic’ misogyny which has persisted for far too long within the music industry.

“Our report rightly focuses on improving protections and reporting mechanisms, and on necessary structural and legislative reforms.

“However, a shift in the behaviour of men—and it is almost always men – at the heart of the music industry is the transformative change needed for talented women to quite literally have their voices heard and be both recognised and rewarded on equal terms.”

TUC: government must do more to end inequality 10 years on from Equality Act

The TUC yesterday called on the UK government to implement the Equality Act in full on its tenth anniversary. The Equality Act became law on 1 October 2010.

The union organisation is also challenging ministers to show how they have delivered on the legal duties in the act in their response to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

It protects working people from discrimination based on age, sex, disability, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, or gender reassignment. It was also designed to improve the lives of working class people through tackling inequality, but that part of the act, the socio-economic duty, was never brought into force. 

The TUC is concerned that ten years since it was introduced, the full powers of the act have still not been implemented. And there is little evidence that the government is fulfilling its legal duty to consider the impact on inequalities in the decisions it makes. 

The TUC says that Covid-19 has deepened inequality and discrimination at work, and is calling on the government to: 

  • Bring the socio-economic duty into force: This was included in the original act but never implemented. It would require government and the public sector to deliver better outcomes for lower income people and make narrowing inequality a priority.  
  • Reintroduce protections subsequently taken out: Previous governments have stripped away protections that were originally in the Equality Act – such Section 40, which would make employers liable for harassment of their employees by customers or clients. The union body says that in the current situation where hostility and assaults on retail and hospitality staff are increasing during the pandemic, this should be reinstated urgently.   
  • Publish equality impact assessments for all government policies, as the law requires: in particular, the government should publish every equality impact assessment that they carried out to inform their response to Covid-19 – and should be held to account for those that are missing.  

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Everyone has the right to respect and equal treatment at work – and in wider society. 

“The Equality Act should have been a gamechanger. But ten years on, it still isn’t fully in force. Now is the time for the government to implement it in full.   

“The pandemic has shown that the UK is still riven with discrimination.  

“Black workers are more likely to be in frontline jobs with inadequate PPE – and more likely to die. Pregnant and disabled workers are too often first in line for redundancy. And the disappearance of much childcare provision has left women struggling to hold on to their jobs.  

“Without the protection of Section 40 of the Equality Act, staff have less protection from abuse and harassment. Yet during the pandemic, we have seen a rise in hostility and assaults on shop workers and hospitality staff.   

“Britain can be a more equal, more prosperous country. Equality must not be an afterthought for ministers.”  

GMB Scotland Marks Ten Year Anniversary of the Equality Act: What Now for Women Workers?

Today (Thursday 1st October) marks ten years since the Equality Act 2010 became law and GMB Scotland will be marking the anniversary with an online event, bringing together prominent lawyers and activists to discuss what the Act has meant for women workers, and what challenges still lie ahead.

The event is being hosted by GMB Scotland’s Women’s Campaign Unit, which is dedicated to organising women workers, to tackle pay injustice and inequality, and to challenge all employers and politicians, whether they be in local councils, Scottish or UK Governments, to properly value women’s work. 

It can be watched live at 19.00 hours tonight (Thursday 1 October) or watched via GMB Scotland’s Facebook page afterwards:

https://www.facebook.com/events/334544347769623

GMB Scotland Organiser Rhea Wolfson said: “There have been many significant victories won for and by women in the past ten years but despite the Equality Act and other anti-discrimination legislation, women’s work is woefully and systematically undervalued and underpaid.

“The question is, what now for women workers? The COVID crisis has surfaced some of the worst unchallenged cases of chronic low pay and exploitation of working women, none more so than sectors like social care where workers have been placed in the eye of a storm.

“It’s confirmed what we already knew. We need significant political and legal interventions to build a proper framework that’s support campaigns being led by women workers across Scotland to fight for pay justice.”