Discrimination or not?

[NMAI]

PART-TIME WORKING ... we all know just how difficult it is to find part-time jobs, let alone progressive, well paid part-time jobs with training and opportunities.
I work for a very large company of over 12k employees. They are great in many aspects, pay, bonus, training if you are full time, benefits, culture etc. BUT it's INCREDIBLY difficult to find part-time opportunities in the business.

In my 'quest' to find a part-time opportunity due to my secondment ending in December, I have come up against massive 'anti part-time' attitudes, culture and language throughout the business.

Some examples;

• Internal recruitment manager states 'Branches do not like part-time, which is difficult because there are so many great part-time job-seekers I could place in roles'
• HR Manager States; "Part-time usually means four full time days. There's very few to no roles part-time"
• Area Manager States (after being asked if they'd consider part-time in a branch assistant manager role); "A part-time manager would not set a good example"
• Being asked numerous times when I'd be thinking about increasing my hours.
• Senior Manager vetoing the option for the opportunity of a full-time role being trialled on a part-time basis despite my career history and experience being very well matched to the role and an interim manager putting me forward for the role telling me I'd fit the role perfectly. Senior manager also states that IF they'd even consider a 3/4 day role, it would be "incredibly busy and knowing how much I want work life balance and the importance of my family, it might not work"!!!
• The business working hard on their equality, diversity and inclusion policies with key focuses on certain groups (menopause, disability, women) and with a motto that outlines their values as 'purposeful & valuable to all' they completely disregard and ignore part-time groups of people. They also have a Gender & Development network and celebrate Women's International Day with events and the like.
• When I pose the question to HR Seniors - will the business start focussing on part-time and flexile working - I am completely ignored! On live HR Teams meetings, I ask the question - again getting ignored altogether whilst other questions get acknowledged

To me this is direct and indirect discrimination - not just discriminatory to me but to ALL that limited to working part-time or only want to work part time. Am I wrong to think this?

My husband says none of it is aimed at me so it's not discrimination and warns I could be playing the victim. BUT it's not just about me.

I also have a particular history with this company 16 years ago not allowing me to work part-time 3-days following the birth of my first daughter. They used VERY weak excuses that, at the time, did pursue an ACAS enquiry but due to poor mental health (post-natal depression), I was not strong mentally to challenge.

That's not discrimination that's robust management of a company. You cant have several part time managers. The. Communication alone. Would be a nightmare. Mixed messages all over the show.

No. Its not me but a colleague. The child is 14yo but needs help getting to and from school which is 5 minutes away. Single mother. No transport provided by LA. With the commute she is away from home 8am to 6pm. The child also needs someone to be at home when they get back from school for safety reasons. There is no impact on work. She will have to resign if she is forced to come into the office.

Another colleague doing very similar but not identical role moved house 4 hours away from the office. They have been allowed to work from home.

Sorry I assumed that question was to me but maybe it was to OP.

This all sounds very familiar to what my sibling was told, they left in the end. Does the company start with the letters SC?

Yes, working 3 days a week and 2 of those from home. During covid this changed to 3 days from home so she's just asking for this to be continued.

Child is now at secondary school so no childcare provision as there used to be at Primary.

Every person employed by a company for 6 months duration has the legal right to request a change to a home working contract. Of course, every employer has the legal right to refuse, but the business reasons must be real and fall within 8 categories. They can't be based on what might happen, the reasons have to already exist in fact.

Add in the carer element (and the associative protection of the Equality Act 2010) then home working can be considered as a reasonable adjustment and so a contract change would therefore not be essential.

It would be hard for an employer to dispute that a job cannot be done from home if it has already been effectively done from home during the pandemic,

Again, ACAS can offer free advice on this.

That's harsh. She's trying to care for her disabled child. She would have to resign if they make her come back into the office. There is NO business need for her to be in the office. She's wfh from home for the last 3.5 years with no issues.

Isn't this associative disability discrimination? The colleague who moved house is allowed to wfh but the colleague with a disabled child isn't?!

Totally agree. I really hope those commenting on this post in the way you mention are not line managers or working in HR. So old-fashioned and closed-minded.

The trouble is your "opinion" about what constitutes indirect discrimination re part time working doesn't necessarily equate to the legal position. For a start, if you were a legally qualified person you would not be asserting that you (blanket) "think" it's indirect discrimination, because it would be impossible to state that without examining individual facts about a specific case, to determine where an actual person had been indirectly discriminated against, in law due to sex or disability.

That's why the OPs premise of what constitutes discrimination is so misguided, as are so many people in society. Just because things don't go their way, because they don't get what they personally want, their first port of call is to cry discrimination, which is damaging because it devalues the real purpose and intent of the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act (2010) for those in genuine need.

I think the disability has got worse so the child needs more support now than before.

I really disagree with this. Companies are missing out on amazing talent if they don't think outside the box and work flexibly and allow job share or a division of responsibility. There are very few positions that need the same exact person there every working day - what do they do when this person is on annual leave or in training all day? - job sharing is very doable. People who are skilled professionals but only able or willing to work part time will go elsewhere (if they geographically can). I'm going back to my management position part time after mat leave and I'm just taking on fewer projects and managing a couple else people which will go to other capable people. This is a small team and we can work it out, and huge corporation should be able to too.

You make valid points, but it all boils down to a bottom line and what a company decides to do. If better workers are attracted to flexible work schedules, then the market will eventually show that. Your points actually do prove out somewhat, because remote work is now a part of professional life. Allowing some people to work remotely has worked out really well for some companies.

I think it boils down to the type of job. See, when I go on vacation, I take my laptop and my phone with me and it is very rare that I go a day without working. Because while the reality is, someone else could step in and do my job if I was hit by a bus, there would be a steep learning curve and productivity would be lost. I think the difference is the particular skill set I have and the level I'm at in the corporation makes things different for me than say, for a help desk person, for example. My job isn't one where I'm interchangeable, but those jobs do exist.

I think it's smart for companies to explore allowances for part time workers when it fits the expectation for the job, I encouraged my company to look into part time workers for help desk phones. But the decision is up to the company. As long as no one is being forced by some heavy-handed government regulation to provide "equitable" results (results that are the same regardless of merit) then it's smart to think outside the box. It has to be voluntary though.

"If better workers are attracted to flexible work schedules, then the market will eventually show that."

I don't agree. Without an attitude change from management the market won't change. You could say the same about women in the workplace by analglogy. "If women are as good as men in the workplace, then the market will eventually show that". Well, for hundreds of years that didn't happen because the prevailing culture was that women aren't as good as men. If the attitude persists that PT workers are entitled and not sufficiently dedicated to their jobs then the market won't change. Companies will just continue to miss out on excellent workers or either need or want to work PT. It's a lose-lose scenario.

And despite massive cultural change about women's abilities, women are still under paid and underrepresented in many workplaces, especially in senior management. You can't rely on the market to fix prejudices.

The company employs you, you don't employ the company the hours you choose.

It's a very poor culture and very short sighted of them to take such an outdated approach to flexible working.

But you'd be better to look for another job because it would take a change of leadership at the top to sort this culture out.

I wouldn’t say it’s discrimination. I agree it’s shit, and short sighted, and not supportive of women and people with disabilities or care responsibilities. It’s not how our society and economy should be operating.

There are lots of very skilled and qualified people who, for various reasons, can’t work full time. I’m not saying that every job should be accessible to them, because some jobs do require a full time presence. But there should at least be SOME decent jobs that are available part time. Not just shitty min wage manual labour jobs.

In the current market, those who have a decent part time job are overwhelmingly those who got the job on a full time basis and then dropped down to part time. Literally no jobs are advertised as part time, except the aforementioned shitty manual labour jobs. Which is a shame, because in my experience the people who have a good part time job are incredible grateful and committed and hard working, and likely to stick around and be loyal. Simply because decent part time jobs are so hard to come by!