Equality watchdog in court battle over 'lax' laws for women at work

Equality watchdog in court battle over 'lax' laws for women at work

The Equal Opportunities Commission is taking the government to the high court this week over sex equality laws which it says leave women with too little protection against sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination. The watchdog accuses the Trade and Industry secretary, Alistair Darling, of failing to properly implement the EU's 2002 equal treatment directive to beef up protection for women workers.

It says regulations amending the Sex Discrimination Act, which took effect in October 2005, have too narrow a definition of harassment and fall short of the directive's intention - to ensure that women in the workplace are not subjected to "any unwanted conduct related to their sex which violates their dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment".

For example, the law excludes harassment by an employer's clients or customers, even if the employer knew about but it but took no action. The EOC said sexual harassment by customers was rife in the hotel and restaurant trade, which employs 670,000 women. In a judicial review application to be heard tomorrow and Wednesday, lawyers for the EOC will also argue that maternity leave rights remain unclear. The uncertainty is over whether a woman is protected if she was not consulted about a change to her job while on leave, or if she fell behind for promotion because additional maternity leave was not counted towards length of service.

Not only is the law unclear,.....continued below

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but it also leaves pregnant women in a worse position than the old law did, the EOC maintains. To win a discrimination case, pregnant women may now have to show that their employers treated them worse than if they had not been pregnant. The EOC questions whether Annette Baird, a supermarket checkout clerk who won a discrimination claim in 2005 because her employers refused to allow her to go to the toilet more often while she was pregnant and made her work a tiring back-to-back shift, would have won under the new law.

The equality watchdog said it was "concerned that the lack of clarity ... could lead to expensive, stressful and time consuming litigation." It added: "The EOC is looking to the court to remedy the defects in the regulations and to provide employers and individuals with clear guidance about their rights and responsibilities."

Pregnancy discrimination and sexual harassment affect thousands of women each year, said the equality body. In a recent EOC investigation, almost 50% of women said they experienced some form of disadvantage at work as a result of pregnancy. Harassment cases make up almost a quarter of all successful sex discrimination employment tribunal claims and sexual harassment is one of the top five reasons for calls to the EOC's helpline.

The EOC's chairwoman, Jenny Watson, said: "It is crucial that employers understand what is expected of them and that women enjoy the full protection of the law. The EOC believes that certain aspects of the equal treatment directive have not been implemented effectively and that the law is unclear. This government has taken important steps to end these persistent and stubborn forms of discrimination, and it would indeed be unfortunate if these regulations remained unchallenged."