A coalition of campaigners has urged the UK authorities to not betray working girls by ditching its guarantees to clamp down on sexual harassment and office being pregnant discrimination in its flagship employment invoice.
Earlier than the Queen’s speech on Tuesday, campaigners are calling on the federal government to push ahead with the invoice, which was promised in 2019 and promoted as the way in which to guard UK staff after Britain left the EU.
Unions and campaigners have reacted with fury to experiences that the invoice has been shelved, saying the failure to behave on promised protections dangers “turning the clock again” for ladies at work.
Frances O’Grady, the secretary normal of the Trades Union Congress, mentioned: “Everybody deserves to be handled pretty at work. However too many ladies are discriminated in opposition to as a result of they’re pregnant, pushed out of labor as a result of they’ve caring duties and too many nonetheless expertise sexual harassment at work.
“If ministers don’t announce the employment invoice within the Queen’s speech, they’re abandoning working girls.”
The TUC, which referred to as the shelving of the invoice a betrayal of working individuals, has joined forces with the Fawcett Society, Maternity Motion, and the Girls’s Funds Group to push for its revival.
The federal government had mentioned its employment invoice, promised earlier than the UK formally left the EU because the central mechanism to safeguard staff’ rights, would make the nation “one of the best place on the planet to work” after Brexit.
It promised to make employers liable for stopping sexual harassment, in addition to extending redundancy protections for pregnant girls and making versatile working the default, until employers had an excellent purpose to refuse it. It additionally promised the best to every week’s depart for unpaid carers and paid depart for folks with youngsters needing neonatal care.
However Cupboard Workplace officers have stopped engaged on the invoice, that means it’s unlikely to make the speech, the Monetary Instances reported, quoting three unnamed civil servants.
The chair of Maternity Motion, Heather Wakefield, mentioned the employment invoice had been the federal government’s solely response to analysis in 2016 by the Equality and Human Rights Fee, which discovered that that being pregnant and maternity discrimination was rife in Britain’s workplaces, with 390,000 girls experiencing discrimination.
“Abandoning that dedication now, by shelving the employment invoice, would imply the federal government has wasted six years speaking about – however not truly doing something to deal with – such discrimination,” she mentioned.
Mary-Ann Stephenson, the director of the Girls’s Funds Group, mentioned the pandemic had revolutionised attitudes to versatile and hybrid working, but the federal government had missed a chance to degree the taking part in subject for working moms.
“Failing to ship this invoice is failing to ship for ladies,” she mentioned. “Care is the basis of a lot of the discrimination girls face – this invoice would have offered important protections.”
A spokesperson from the Division for Enterprise, Power and Industrial Technique mentioned it couldn’t touch upon the content material’s of the Queen’s speech. They mentioned the federal government was dedicated to creating “a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage financial system” to delivers on the “ambition to make the UK one of the best place on the planet to work”, which included guaranteeing girls’s rights within the office have been protected.
