In What Situations Do People Rely On The Equality Act?

Everyone wants to be treated fairly and no-one wants to treated differently in a negative way to others around them. The Equality Act of 2010 is an important piece of legislation. The Act itself does not bring anything into the law, apart from a few provisions on age discrimination. Most importantly is the fact that it tries to group all previous anti-discrimination law in the UK under one overall banner. This makes it much easier for people who are subjected to discriminatory behaviour to assert their statutory rights to be free from that kind of damaging behaviour in their employment.

The people rely on the Equality Act are the people who are suffering at the hands of prejudiced or careless people. The main types of discriminatory behaviour are: indirect, direct, harassment and victimisation. Indirect discrimination is a situation where rules and regulations that seem to be egalitarian in essence are revealed to actually adversely affect one individual or group. Direct discrimination is the active treatment of somebody negatively for prejudiced reasons by somebody else. This could involve a whole range of behaviour that is obviously unfair, such as one group's preferential treatment or a culture of racist jokes in the workplace.

Harassment is a pattern of behaviour by one or more people that acts to create an intimidating, unpleasant and offensive environment for other individuals or groups for prejudiced reasons. This kind of behaviour is an act of theft; it steals people's dignity and self respect and can seriously affect a person's confidence or health. Victimisation is where a person continues to be treated differently after making a formal complaint about the behaviour they have been subjected to.

Other than these specific types of discriminatory patterns, we can identify other situations in the employment process where people will rely on the provisions of the Equality Act. If somebody feels that they have been treated unfairly at any point during the application process, further training or promotion, the provision of facilities and services, the chance of engagement or the dismissal or redundancy process, then they will be able to use the Equality act to take their complaint to an employment Tribunal and try to get compensation.

Everyone in some way will rely on the equality Act because it is their defence against being treated unfairly in the workplace. The Act obviously aims to provide specific protection for particularly vulnerable groups such as ethnic minorities or people who are disabled, but in its egalitarian nature it is there for anyone who happens to need it.

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