Belief that ‘white middle-aged men’ have an ‘unseen advantage’ at work falls under equality laws, tribunal judge rules

Obviously, employers must equally provide additional work spaces that are no less favourable than the other, when opposing beliefs/realities clash in the workplace.

Hey don't say that - if it's just an obvious fact based on evidence then she could have lost her case because it's not a proper "belief"!😂

I also wonder - did the hearing happen and what was the outcome?

Did she actually win the employment tribunal though?
'The ruling comes in the case of self-proclaimed feminist Misti Kilburn, a senior HR manager suing a global manufacturing company for belief and sex discrimination.'

White middle-aged men have an unseen advantage at work? What a ridiculous idea! How could anybody get that impression?😒

I worked at Sensient and left about 5 years ago. At the time the whole HR team (3) showed a hatred towards male employees so I'm not shocked her mannerisms were eventually challenged. There is a difference in having a belief and enacting your own prejudices on the workforce to meet your own agenda.

Thanks Pencils, that clarifies it for me.

If your deep Christian beliefs mean you don't believe in contraception or MAP for ex, the onus should be on you to not get a job as a pharmacist, not on the employer to have to refer your customers to someone who will do their whole job properly.

The employer can say 'all employed pharmacists must be willing to dispense contraception and MAP'

That would be indirect discrimination against people with deep religious objections but if the employer can show it's a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim then it would be lawful.

Similarly an employer could say all employees must be available to work on Friday evenings, or on Sundays, or a butcher could say all employees must be willing to butcher pork.

Legitimate aim does not need to be particularly worthy - business aims are legitimate. Whether it was proportionate would depend on the individual circumstances, e.g. a small community pharmacy might need all employees to dispense contraception and MAP because they only have one or two working there and they would otherwise have to turn customers away. OTOH a big online pharmacy might have enough pharmacists working that it creates no operational difficulties for the religious pharmacist to opt out of dispensing them.

Not getting into a debate about that, but suffice to say I think it should be perfectly ok both to hold and express those opinions in the workplace and to challenge them, and absent any form of discrimination or harassment by the holder on that basis, people shouldn’t be sacked or punished for holding them.

Women certainly seem to be more employable these days, especially in jobs that require less formal education. More traditional male labour jobs are the ones that have disappeared in great numbers..

Indeed.

The problem is everyone is special.

That’s why I basically think privilege theory isn’t that valuable at the individual level. It’s useful in terms of class analysis to a point.

I don’t have a problem with working class men talking about class privilege. They’d have a job making it stick that women are especially privileged though.

Of course I don't think people should be sacked for their beliefs. But this is making it a minefield for employers. If Mili can talk about privileged white men; working class white men can talk about privileged middle class white women.

It's a zero sum game of top trumps as previous poster said.

Mili works in HR a job which by definition requires neutrality. I'm interested to see what her claims are.

I guarantee you will find someone who isn't a WMAM has had a worse experience though.

Once you start playing top trumps with privilege, equality and society, you'll never get any work done. It's only half-funny to comment on the supposed productivity crisis the UK supposedly faces that has become a permanent reason for every shrinking tax revenues ....

My dh is a white middle aged man. He’s retired now but was often referred to in work as having some sort of advantage. He reminded people he’s the child of Irish immigrants who came to London in the 60s without a pot to piss in

Indeed.

I imagine it “came to a quiet end” because Google paid him off handsomely including a clause to not discuss it any more.

If you don’t think he should have been sacked then you are basically in line with the point here, that you shouldn’t sack people just because they have ideological beliefs, however wrong or objectionable. Where those beliefs are not used to discriminate against others or harass others. Plenty of people absolutely did want him sacked though.

So based purely on statistics, a woman could refuse to engage with a white middle-aged man because they have a cause to doubt their competence ?

I meant it's not wrong 😀, but I can't see that getting me off any speeding tickets.

Personally I'd remove religion as something which needs to be protected or considered at work

This would mean that my Muslim sil would have no recourse when she was discriminated against at work. That really wouldn’t be right.

I suppose my main concern is that this is just poking the hornet's nest given the tone of the Telegraph article.
Will we see MRA activists doing a James Damore and demanding the right to argue against feminist principles.
James Damore's diversity lawsuit against Google comes to quiet end - CNET https://share.google/2TNoldcGUYZ2e458T
By the way I don't think he should have been sacked.

I'm coming to the conclusion that protected belief shouldn't exist, only protected characteristics, such as sex. race, disability etc. Rooted in reality stuff!

While we all retain the right to our opinions and no one's opinions should see them being discriminated against at work (so long as they are doing their job properly), perhaps it's time that we stopped this 'bring your whole self to work' thing, and as adults, accepted that no one needs to hear our opinions on Brexit or Trump or TWAW while we are carrying out our paid employment. And if we choose to share our opinions, other people have the right to think we are batshit and judge us!

Personally I'd remove religion as something which needs to be protected or considered at work - it's a personal, completely unprovable belief that employers shouldn't have to indulge. If your deep Christian beliefs mean you don't believe in contraception or MAP for ex, the onus should be on you to not get a job as a pharmacist, not on the employer to have to refer your customers to someone who will do their whole job properly.

I can't get on board with some opinions being more important than others. The nature of belief is that it's deeply and sincerely held, whatever the nature of that belief is!

The only exception I can really think of is where the nature of the job has changed after you've begun employment.

The thing is, we are living in topsy turvy land where gender identity theory is treated as fact whereas sex being binary, immutable and relevant is treated as a protected belief.

In reality it should be the other way round.

Unfortunately I think we have ended up here because feminists needed to use the Equality Act to protect them against discrimination, and "being willing to state facts at a time when the clowns are in charge of the circus" isn't a protected characteristic. At the time the Equality Act was drafted, this war on reality hadn't yet begun and nobody anticipated that speaking the truth was something that would need specific protection in law.

I wonder whether it would have been better for feminists to go down the indirect sex discrimination route on the grounds that denying the material reality of biological sex has a disproportionate negative effect on women.