Last week (when few were watching) Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton published his detailed plans for amalgamating the various employment rights bodies into a ‘ World Class Employment Relations Service’.  The government had previously announced it’s intention to bring all the functions of the Labour Relations Commission, National Employment Rights Authority and the Equality Tribunal under one roof.  The blue print released last week documents the moves that have been made already to streamline functions and documents the minister’s intentions in the drafting of legislation to produce a ‘one stop shop’.  Since I have a personal and professional interest in equality and anti-discrimination I’m restricting my comments to the proposals significant to these areas.

The reforms outlined will see the Equality Tribunal wound down and it’s functions transferred to the new Workplace Relations Commission.  Discrimination in the workplace, pay or pensions would still be dealt with by the body. But the blue print does not discuss in any way the nature of discrimination in the workplace and the way in which there would be a continued expertise in and support for working on cases where people are discriminated against due to their gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, nationality, Family status, membership of the Travelling Community.

Again this government is proposing to dump equality for fairness and wipe out any concept of promoting anti-discrimination practices in it’s work. (The last government decimated the Equality Authority and Irish Human Rights Commission) Indeed the document has no discussion at all about the need for specialisation or developmental work in promoting equality in the workplace.  This is especially worrying given the numbers of cases being taken under the gender and race grounds of late which show no regard and targeted harassment of pregnant women and mothers for example.  (A search for terms including gender and disability in the document drew a blank).

Further still the Minister proposes that anybody who wants to make a complaint about being unfairly treated in the workplace, badly paid, dismissed or discriminated against on Equality grounds will have to pay a fee to make that complaint. The suggested fee is €50.  This may not sound much but if you are not being paid the minimum wage and want to complain about it or have lost your job due to unfair treatment you are probably not going to be in the position to pay out for seeking your rights. Nor should you be expected to.

The document is very reactive in nature and does not in any detail talk about the concept of promoting rights in a workplace and good practice and supporting workers to have respect given to their terms and conditions.   It is hard to argue that streamlining the services and speeding up access to resolution measures which seems to be the focus of the Minister’s actions (and closing down some quangos ala New Era) will not be excellent for those affected as the delays in taking cases under both equality and other employment rights mechanisms are ridiculously long.

However the document fails to reflect at all on the impact of winding up the Equality Tribunal on the area of discrimination in goods and services for which the Tribunal is currently responsible for.  The Equal Status Act sets out how the rights of people in the nine grounds are protected in respect of accessing goods and services.  If the Tribunal is wound up where will those who are denied access to education, health, shops and other services to go to seek redress?

I wonder what Mervyn Taylor who first worked on the area of creating specialist anti discrimination resolution measures in the 1990’s would say?  And what are Labour saying as yet another area of Equality is insipidly moved into Fairness by their partners in government?  And what of the Trade Unions?  The so called stakeholders?  Are they too standing idly by this dilution? Perhaps too caught up in the changes to the Labour Relations Commission and Labour Court and other areas where they earn their stripes?

The closing date for consultation on the paper is 30 April.  You should tell the Minister what you think about what he proposes before he drafts the legislation to rip everything asunder and maybe copy it to others, however the document states he is not interested in going over old ground and only wants to hear about ‘positive’ suggestions.  So no moaning about rights restrictions or inequality or unfairness of it all.  That’s some consultation!