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In April 2010 the Equality Act was passed. It came into force on October 1st . This important piece of law harmonises previous equality and discrimination law into one Act. The range of this Act is vast, whilst not a definitive statement of the law. The paragraphs below summarise the key points from the Act.

Protected Characteristics
The Equality Act identifies nine “protected characteristics” which are covered by the legislation – all though not all characteristics are covered by all parts of the Act. The protected characteristics are:

age,
disability,
gender,
gender reassignment,
marriage and civil partnership,
pregnancy and maternity,
race,
religion or belief,
sexual orientation.
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Protection against discrimination
The Act outlaws direct discrimination. Direct discrimination occurs when someone is treated less favourably than another person because of a protected characteristic they have or are thought to have (see perseptive discrimination below), or because they associate with someone who has a protected characteristic (see associative discrimination below).
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Associative discrimination
Will apply to race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender reassignment and sex. This is direct discrimination against someone because they associate with another person who possesses a protected characteristic.
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Perceptive discrimination
Already applies to age, race, religion or belief and sexual orientation. It is now extended to cover:

disability,
gender reassignment,
sex.

This is direct discrimination against an individual because others think they possess a particular protected characteristic. It applies even if the person does not actually possess that characteristic.
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Indirect discrimination
Already applies to age, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and marriage and civil partnership. It is now extended to cover disability and gender reassignment. Indirect discrimination can occur when you have a condition, rule, policy or even a practice in your company that applies to everyone but particularly disadvantages people who share a protected characteristic.

Indirect discrimination can be justified if an employer can show that they acted reasonably in managing their business, i.e. that it is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. A legitimate aim might be any lawful decision made in running a business or organisation, but if there is a discriminatory effect, the sole aim of reducing costs is likely to be unlawful. Being proportionate really means being fair and reasonable, including showing that they have looked at “less discriminatory” alternatives to any decision made.
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Harassment
Harassment is “unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, which has the purpose or effect of violating an individual's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual”. Harassment applies to all protected characteristics except for pregnancy and maternity and marriage and civil partnership. Employees will now be able to complain of behaviour that they find offensive even if not directed at them, and the complainant need not possess the relevant characteristic themselves. Employees are also protected from harassment because of perception and association (see above).
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Third party harassment
Already applies to sex. It is now extended to cover age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief and sexual orientation. The Equality Act makes an employer potentially liable for harassment of employees by people (third parties) who are not employees of the company/organisation such as customers or clients. An employer will only be liable when harassment has occurred on at least two previous occasions, is aware that is has taken place, and has not taken reasonable steps to prevent it from happening again.
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Victimisation
Victimisation occurs when an employee is treated badly because they have made or supported a complaint or raised a grievance under the Equality Act; or because they are suspected of doing so. An employee is not protected from victimisation if they have maliciously made or supported an untrue complaint. There is not a need to compare treatment of a complainant with that of a person who has not made or supported a complaint under the Act.
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Pay discrimination
For most pay discrimination cases, where an employee claims unequal pay due to the pay structures they will need to point to a real comparator of the opposite sex in the same employment. However, a change in the Equality Act allows a claim of direct pay discrimination to be made, even if no real person comparator can be found. This means that a claimant who can show evidence that they would have received better remuneration from their employer if they were of a different sex may have a claim, even if there is no–one of the opposite sex doing equal work in the organisation. This would be a claim under sex discrimination.

Pay secrecy
The Act makes it unlawful for an employer to prevent or restrict their employees from having a discussion to establish if differences in pay exist that are related to protected characteristics. It also makes terms of the contract of employment that require pay secrecy unenforceable. However, an employer can require their employees to keep pay rates confidential from some people outside the workplace, for example a competitor organisation.
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Positive Action
The term ‘positive action' refers to legal measures that are designed to counteract the effects of past discrimination and to help abolish stereotyping. It can only be done when a particular group has been identified as under-represented in a certain area of employment. As at October 2010 the government is still considering whether to implement this aspect of the Equality Act.

Pre-employment health-related checks
The Equality Act limits the circumstances when an employer can ask health-related questions before offering an individual a job . Up to this point, they can only ask health-related questions to help decide whether any reasonable adjustments are needed to enable the individual to take part in the selection process.

Extension of employment tribunal powers
Under previous legislation, an employment tribunal could make a recommendation that an employer must eliminate or reduce the effect on the claimant of any discrimination. The Act extends this power so that it will now be possible for a tribunal to make recommendations that an organisation takes steps to eliminate or reduce the effect of discrimination on other employees, not only on the claimant. For example, the tribunal might specify that an employer needs to train all staff about the organisation's bullying and harassment policy. This power does not apply to equal pay cases.

Marriage and civil partnership
The Act protects employees who are married or in a civil partnership against discrimination. Single people are not protected.
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Pregnancy and maternity
A woman is protected against discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy and maternity during the period of her pregnancy, and any statutory maternity leave to which she is entitled. During this period, pregnancy and maternity discrimination cannot be treated as sex discrimination. An employer must not take into account an employee's period of absence due to pregnancy-related illness when making a decision about her employment.

Religion or belief
In the Equality Act, religion includes any religion. It also includes a lack of religion, in other words, employees or jobseekers are protected if they do not follow a certain religion or have no religion at all. Additionally, a religion must have a clear structure and belief system. Belief means any religious or philosophical belief or a lack of such belief. To be protected, a belief must satisfy various criteria, including that it is a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour. Denominations or sects within a religion can be considered a protected religion or religious belief. Humanism is a protected philosophical belief but political beliefs would not be protected. Discrimination because of religion or belief can occur even where both the discriminator and recipient are of the same religion or belief.

Sexual orientation
The Act protects lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual people from discrimination.

Gender reassignment
The Act provides protection for transsexual people. A transsexual person is someone who proposes to, starts or has completed a process to change his or her gender. The Act no longer requires a person to be under medical supervision to be protected - so a woman who decides to live permanently as a man but does not undergo any medical procedures would be covered. Transgender people such as cross dressers, who are not transsexual because they do not intend to live permanently in the gender opposite to their birth sex, are not protected by the Act. It is discrimination to treat transsexual people less favourably for being absent from work because they propose to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone gender reassignment than they would be treated if they were absent because they were ill or injured. Medical procedures for gender reassignment such as hormone treatment should not be treated as a “lifestyle choice”.
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Disability Discrimination
The Act has made it easier for a person to show that they are disabled and protected from disability discrimination. Under the Act, a person is disabled if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, which would include things like using a telephone, reading a book or using public transport.

The Act places a duty on the employer to make reasonable adjustments for staff to help them overcome disadvantage resulting from an impairment (e.g. by providing assistive technologies to help visually impaired staff use computers effectively).

The Act includes a new protection from discrimination arising from disability. This states that it is discrimination to treat a disabled person unfavourably because of something connected with their disability (e.g. a tendency to make spelling mistakes arising from dyslexia). This type of discrimination is unlawful where the employer or other person acting for the employer knows, or could reasonably be expected to know, that the person has a disability. This type of discrimination is only justifiable if an employer can show that it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Additionally, indirect discrimination now covers disabled people. This means that a job applicant or employee could claim that a particular rule or requirement disadvantages people with a disability. Unless you could justify this, it would be unlawful.
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Public sector duties
Prior to the Equality Act there were three slightly different positive duties on public bodies: the race, disability and gender duties. These required authorities to have ‘due regard' to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment and to promote equality of opportunity.

The specific duties (which apply to almost all UNISON organised workplaces) require all listed public bodies to produce a gender, disability and race equality scheme, or a single equality scheme showing how it intended to fulfil the general and specific duties. Trade unions have the right to be consulted on the nature and implementation of the scheme(s). Employers also have to equality impact assess what they do.

Please see the relevant codes of practice for each of the three duties on the Equality and Human Rights Commission website www.equalityhumanrights.com

Please see the full version of the UNISON equality representatives handbook at: http://www.unison.org.uk/equality/pages_view.asp?did=11444

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