How equality laws are harming those they are meant to protect
THE notion of equality has become debased in modern Britain.
Instead of guaranteeing equal treatment, the law is now being used by sectional vested interests in pursuit of narrow advantage.
Rather than bringing people together, laws supposedly aimed at protecting women and ethnic minorities are driving people apart, sowing the seeds of resentment and mistrust. They are also producing unintended consequences, often boomeranging back to harm the very people they were supposed to liberate and protect.
Yesterday Nicola Brewer, chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission – the new “super quango” charged with tackling discrimination – admitted that enhanced maternity rights were damaging the job prospects of women.
Ms Brewer said that by extending maternity leave to 52 weeks, compared with just two weeks paternity leave for men, the Government had stacked the employment odds against women. Many employers were refusing to hire or promote women of child-bearing age and a proposal to extend the right of women to ask for flexible hours until their children were 16 could exacerbate the trend, she said.
Women of child-bearing age will not be hired
“The current regulations have had the unintended consequence of making women a less attractive prospect to employers,” said Ms Brewer.
Prospective employers are forbidden from asking job applicants whether they are planning to have children. Instead of boosting the chances of women, it has torpedoed them.
As Sir Alan Sugar recently admitted, the idea an applicant might take time off to have a child is “a psychological negative thought” for employers.
“They would like to ask the question, ‘Are you planning to get married and to have any children?’ These laws are counter-productive for women. You’re not allowed to ask, so it’s easy – just don’t employ them,” he said.
Among the biggest losers are women who have no intention of having children and are focused upon career success. As the law is currently framed, any employer wishing to put them into the senior positions their talents merit must play a human resources version of Russian roulette.
The biggest gainers, however, are those women already in senior posts in politically correct public sector organisations such as the BBC and the Civil Service, which can use taxpayers’ money to fund lavish maternity packages. It is no surprise these are the women – patron saint Harriet Harman – who have pushed the maternity rights agenda so hard over the past decade.
It is a myth put about by the Harmanistas that businesses gain when a female employee becomes pregnant. She will come back a more mature and dedicated member of staff, runs the claim. What baloney. For a woman to become pregnant is great news for her but, in general, it is a major disadvantage for her employer and work colleagues.
The employer must attempt to find a temporary replacement rather than hire a permanent one, contribute heavily to maternity pay and face a large possibility of being rung up once maternity benefits have been exhausted to be told that the new mum does not want to come back to work after all.
In the current business climate this is a difficult enough strain for large employers. For small ones it is a disaster.
Often there is no cash for a temporary replacement so the woman’s colleagues (usually female) have to take on her workload as well. If she does come back, the new mum is frankly unlikely to make the office the focus of her life.
Her thoughts will naturally be with her bundle of joy back home and her job commitment is more likely to wane than to be enhanced.
I realise these are inconvenient truths but denying them has produced the “unintended consequences” of which Ms Brewer speaks. Being a career public servant, Ms Brewer’s answer is that workplace maternity rights should be extended to men as well. She wants men to get 12 weeks of paternity leave on 90 per cent of earnings. There is hardly a business in Britain that could cope with such a burden.
Amazingly, the newly cuddly Conservative Party seems to be going along with this. Shadow Minister for Women and Equality Theresa May yesterday said: “The EHRC says dads need a slice of the action too. We agree.” As Britain stares recession in the face, is there no party prepared to stand up for the interests of the wealth-creating business sector?
Women’s employment rights is not the only area where the militant equality agenda is producing perverse outcomes.
A body called the National Black Police Association is helping black and Asian officers to launch discrimination cases against their employers. Some 300 officers have so far contacted it with a view to seeking damages for the failure to be promoted or other perceived sleights.
