The Employment Equality Bill will be published today. The Bill, which prohibits discrimination in employment on grounds such as sex, marital status, religion, age, disability and race, is an amended version of the Bill passed by the previous government but later found to be unconstitutional. The most significant of these unconstitutional sections related to the liability placed on employers to employ people with disabilities.
If they were, in other respects, the most suitable person for the job, employers were required to make work stations accessible for them.
The court subsequently found this placed too costly a burden on employers and contravened Article 43 of the Constitution, which protects the rights of private property. Under the new Bill, employers will only be obliged to recruit suitable candidates with disabilities if the costs are nominal.
A requirement in the old legislation which could have made employers liable for serious damages from employees who were the victims of assault in the workplace has been modified. Under the new Bill, employers who take reasonable precautions to protect staff will have met their statutory obligations. Requirements for the certification of equality reviews and action plans by employers have been relaxed to meet the court's objections.
Trade unionists will be disappointed that the Government did not use the opportunity of the new Bill to reintroduce "hypothetical" pay comparators. This would allow women in many overwhelmingly female employments, who do not have a direct male comparator, to use hypothetical comparators in other jobs to better their pay and conditions. A provision allowing for this in the previous Bill was dropped because of strong objections from employer groups.
Announcing the publication of the Bill, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, said it would meet the needs to protect workers in areas where discrimination was particularly acute. He instanced sexual harassment, where previously employees had to bring cases on the basis of case law developed primarily in the Labour Court.
The new Bill defines sexual harassment and obliges employers to put in place positive action measures to combat it and other barriers to women in the workforce. Single parents, gay people, those with disabilities, members of the travelling community and older workers should see their access to jobs and promotional opportunities improve considerably if the Bill becomes law.
While most emphasis to date has been placed on the implications for employers of having to deal with people with disabilities, they may also have to review radically their attitude towards older people in the workforce. If these can show they are not being recruited, or being offered promotion, solely on the basis of age, employers could face considerable claims for compensation.
The chairwoman of the Employment Equality Agency, Ms Carmel Foley, has welcomed the Bill. While it will have its critics for not going far enough, she said, it marked a great advance on the existing legislation, which is now 20 years old. The EEA is to be turned into an Equality Authority, which will monitor and promote the implementation of this Bill and the new Equal Status Bill, when they are enacted.