Something I heartily approve of

[andrewducker]

The Equality Act 2010 just came into force.

Amongst the many other good things in it, they made secrecy clauses over pay unenforceable, if you are talking about it in order to find out if there is pay discrimination. Which basically makes them totally unenforceable. And a damn good thing too.

Comments

On the minus side

[star-tourmaline.livejournal.com]

http://www.complicity.co.uk/blog/2010/10/no-longer-a-woman/

Re: On the minus side

[andrewducker]

Good Lord. I think I need to look for more on this at lunchtime.

Re: On the minus side

[andrewducker]

Aha. They've left an out for women's support centres and the like that want to exclude trans women. That's going to be....contentious. Simply excluding people like that really isn't going to help.

Re: On the minus side

[naath.livejournal.com]

And by "going to be" you mean "is". And yeah, it is, um, stupid. Worse than stupid. Very bad idea.

A lot of this bill is very good. But that part is dreadful.

Re: On the minus side

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

A lot of this bill is very good. But that part is dreadful.

Indeed.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I think it's funny that some people are saying "but it'll cost us money!?"

It'll only cost you money if a] you were doing it wrong in the first place and b] you deal with pay issues raise the pay of those who were seemingly underpaid to match those who were seemingly overpaid. If someone who was paid less for doing a job was doing it just fine, why not tell the person who was doing the same but getting paid more (your white middle class executive in the handy example I pulled out of the air) to do it for -less-? That's a fairly standard business practice, it's why stuff gets outsourced.

I still can't think of only a handful of days at work in the last decade when I didn't hear racism, sexism or some kind of sexual orientation/religion based prejudice espoused. And not just by people who you would class as being in any kind of majority/traditionally superior position.

Katie Price apparently tried to defend herself in court for driving like an idiot by saying she was a 'typical woman driver'.

[andrewducker]

Yup, totally with you on that.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

On a lighter note, I'd be really interested to see if anyone ever tries to take nighclubs/bars to court that are free or near-free for women while costing more for men since that's pretty damn common.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder who ever thought of making it illegal for people to talk with one-another about how much they're getting paid, in the first place. And then wonder about the legislators who passed a law to make it illegal. I fully understand that you UKns do not have the /o/v/e/r/-/r/i/d/i/n/g/ "Freedom of Speech" Right that we USAns have -- pace GBS's -"Englishmen can say anything they want to, as long as they do what they're told"- -- but can Parliament actually have drifted that far from remembering the Nature of Ordinary Human Beings? (Err.... that was a rhetorical question, and you don't have to bother to reply -- I assume you'd do so in the affirmative. *sigh*)

[andrewducker]

Thankfully, this wasn't rescinding a law making it illegal to talk about your pay, it was making it illegal for employers to include a section in your contract forbidding you from talking about your pay.

[matgb]

"the /o/v/e/r/-/r/i/d/i/n/g/ "Freedom of Speech" Right that we USAns have"

Congress shall make no laws...

Doesn't stop an employer making it a term of employment that you don't tell anyone your salary. An employer isn't Congress. There may be other laws that stop it, but first amendment doesn't help you here, because if you talk about it, you get fired.