What is discrimination?

Employment law provides protection for workers against discrimination at work on the grounds of sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, religion or belief, race, disability, age and the membership or non-membership of a trade union. The legislation is aimed at achieving equality in the workplace by eliminating less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, ethnicity,age, disability, union, or non- union membership.

The legislation on sex and race discrimination makes a distinction between direct discrimination and indirect discrimination. Direct discrimination occurs when an employee receives less favourable treatment blatantly on the grounds of his or her gender or race. An example would be if a man was told he had not been appointed to a secretarial post, because it was regarded as a woman's job.

Indirect discrimination is a rather more complex concept, where a requirement or condition is imposed, which is apparently not discriminatory, but which, in practice, is more difficult for one sex or racial group to comply with and is not a justifiable prerequisite for the job. An example of this would be including in a condition in a job advertisement a height condition, say advertising for taxi drivers who must be above a certain height which would be requirement which fewer women would be able to comply with than men.

Discrimination on the grounds of a worker's disability or age will be unlawful if it cannot be objectively justified.