After a three-year programme of research, the Resolution Foundation has released a report that looks into the scale and nature of workplace discrimination and considers how anti-discrimination rules can be enforced to greater effect.
The survey draws on the experiences of over 3,000 working-age adults and found that one in five (20%) of 18-65 year olds have encountered some form of discrimination either at work or when applying for a job over the last year. Examples of discrimination range from being turned down for a job (13%) to being denied a promotion (8%) or training (7%). However, those from ethnic minority backgrounds and those with disabilities are the most affected with over one-fifth (21%) of people from ethnic minority backgrounds reporting that they have faced workplace discrimination because of their ethnicity alone in the last year, and 15% of disabled people encountering discrimination in the labour market on the basis of disability.
The report also finds that lower paid workers are more concerned about discrimination (20%) than those in the highest paid jobs (11%) - which the report felt was because discrimination is more common in low-paid sectors. For example, 22% of retail workers and 20% of hospitality staff reported suffering some form of discrimination, compared with 14% of workers in the higher-paying manufacturing and finance sectors.
Despite this, those most worried about discrimination were the least likely to challenge it in the courts - more likely than not because higher-paid workers are more likely to have the resources to navigate the Employment Tribunals system. The report gives the example that in 2017, workers earning £40,000 or over were almost twice as likely to take their employer to court as those earning under £20,000, despite the lowest earners being twice as likely to report anxiety about discrimination.
The report ends with various recommendations, including that legal aid should be extended to allow more lower-paid workers to seek recourse through the courts, and that more resources are put into the Employment Tribunals system to reduce the amount of time cases take to be heard and to clear the backlog of cases that has more than doubled since 2018.
Additionally, it recommends that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) - the state body responsible for tackling anti-discrimination law - should be resourced to investigate more cases of workplace discrimination, widening the scope and number of cases they currently can take.
