Furlough Sexism

[LastLaughLane]

I work for a fairly large organisation, in customer services. There are around 30 of us who all do exactly the same job. Around 8 of the staff are men. 50% of the staff had to be furloughed, but not one male member of staff has been furloughed. This has been playing on my mind since it happened and I wondered what your opinions are- I think this is sexism. Should I complain when I return from furlough? I'm not sure if I have grounds to and wondered if any of you had any knowledge about this.

Thank you in advance!

Can't find it sorry.

HollyBollyBooBoo

Statistically you'd expect at least one of the guys in your organisation to have been furloughed (8 out of 30 people is 27%, half of them have been furloughed = just over 1 person).

Eh?

Surely if you're furloughing half of 8 men and 22 women, and do it randomly, you'd expect approximately 4 men and 11 women to be picked. Instead, it was no men and 15 women, or nearly 70% of the women and 0% of the men. That's quite a discrepancy. It should be 50% of each sex, not 27% of 50% of the men because they're only 27% of the total workforce. The stats for your team may be simpler than you're making them.

Subconsciously, really deep down, a lot of people still revert to man provides, women working part time don't need the money so much and should be provided for.

I've seen this a few times in my work life.

Maybe I wasn't clear.

Assuming this isn't being done because people are asking to be furloughed in different proportions depending on whether they're part-time or full-time (which might admittedly be the case if, for e.g., the part-timers decide it's easier for them to pick up the home schooling than their full-time partner who's the main breadwinner), then you as an employer have to be careful about how you're selecting people.

If you furlough part-timers because of business needs (e.g. 2 part timers on half time hours require two desks because of social distancing, whereas one full time worker only needs one - and you can't space the part-timers' desks out far enough) then you're fine. If you just arbitrarily decide part-timers are the obvious choice because (I dunno, insert random non-business need based motivation here) and you disproportionately furlough women as a result, you could be in trouble.

Sex discrimination law in the UK is very carefully framed - it doesn't have to affect all or only one sex, just to disproportionately affect one sex. (The example we were given, on my equalities course when I started at my current employer, was a job ad which said - presumably trying to attract high-flying employees from elsewhere - "You will already be earning X thousand a year". There was case law to establish that this would be indirect sex discrimination because it would be less likely to apply to women than to men.)

But this is why OP needs to get her facts right. She needs to establish that the women working part time asked not to be furloughed in the same proportion as the men working full time, and that the employer didn't have some reason (like social distancing and desk space) why there was a legitimate reason to keep full timers rather than part timers.

Sorry that was to Goosefoot, explaining the concept of indirect sex discrimination.

You can never get it right though in my dh job some were furloughed on full pay why others has to continue working , then speak to colleagues who say how they've painted there house or relaxed in the garden , so those working felt a bit miffed at time's
Are you being paid 80% or is the company topping up ,as if topping up it would be cheaper to top up the part timers

I think "engaging" is a really important word in this.

However, I rather thought the decisions didn't reflect who asked or not - that was my impression from what the OP said anyway. It could be that they realised right away that they couldn't accommodate requests really, so they decided it would be better not to consider that. Or, they might not care, but it doesn't seem we have that information.

I think the issue with this is that even on the face of it, there are very good staff based reasons to keep on the regular FT employees first, regardless of their sex. Those reasons don't go away because the PT employees are largely or entirely women. It's not a zero sum, you are then potentially disadvantaging FT employees because you want to make up some sort of abstract statistical requirements around sex.

These kinds of approaches often turn out to be very superficial and don't address the underlying cause of the employee demographics, and they also run into all the other problems you see in diversity initiatives and
affirmative action schemes over the long term.

It is the law that a decision process that has the effect of penalising women more than men is indirect discrimination.

Whether you agree with it or not.

I would say part time workers are better to keep in many situations at the moment.

If the person has a spouse WFH FT or part time it makes it easier for them to handle any potential childcare/ care for family members etc.

Some of these men may have a FT / PT working partner and then there will be much more disruption to their work as they do their share of the other stuff.

For single people/ those with no kids, well they don't tend to work PT so this is about family and children.

Do any of the men work part time? What proportion of furloughed worked are part timers? I suppose it make more sense to furlough people working part time in that it ensures that you have maximum coverage over the course of the week rather than having a day when you’re suddenly quite understaffed because your proportion of full time to part time workers has dropped. Given that you’d only expect one or two men to be furloughed if random lots were drawn I wouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion it was sexism.

Your employer doesn't need to give grounds for furloughing, only that they don't have enough work which they obviously don't as half the staff were furloughed. It doesn't seem that they only furloughed women either as they kept some working. If there's 8 men and 22 women, that means there's almost 3x as many women to men. You also say that there's plenty of female managers, more so than male so I'm wondering what part you see as sexism?

They could have said ok, the first 15 in the alphabet will stay on, the other 15 will get furloughed. They could have said anyone wearing red in the weeks before will be furloughed, anyone that wasn't won't. The point is, it really doesn't matter how they decided because the employment contract is still in place, everyone still has their rights and if they do make redundancies (you can't predict a future event and assume you will come off worse as a reason for your disadvantage by the way because it's not happened) and you have actually benefitted from them opting to furlough you.

It's difficult times for everyone right now. Businesses too. I just couldn't see myself making actions plans and getting upset over things where I actually got what I needed (furloughed). Why bother? There's no trace of sexism there you've said and there's 3 times as many women to men almost so it was inevitable that it would be mostly women that were furloughed. At least 15 were always going to be

At least 15 people were going to be I meant. So 8 men have stayed on and 7 women have, seems pretty much equal

Is your job currently wfh or going into the office, during this pandemic?

I ask because if the non-furloughed still have to go into the office it makes sense to furlough PT people and keep on FT as it would result in less mixing between people overall.

E.G. if there are 15 lots of FT work still to be done (15 sets of 40 hours a week) it makes sense to have 15 FT workers going into the office to do this as then it is 15 people mixing whether if they picked 10 FT worked and 10 PT workers (who equate to 5 FT workers) that would be 20 people mixing and thus increase the risk of transmission and between a larger group.

My son's workplace invited people to request to be furloughed as they needed a reduced workforce. They added that, if they didnt have enough volunteers, it would be done randomly.

My son asked not to be furloughed if possible and, as many of the women asked to be, he has picked up more hours/money as a result.

It's certainly reflected the sexist set ups in their homes as the the majority of those asking to be furloughed were women who needed to look after their children while their husbands continued to work.

But not the fault of the organisation.