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Recruitment News

Opportunities for all

Opportunities for all is our new bi-monthly section dedicated to supporting equal rights for disadvantaged groups.

“Equality and human rights underpin our vision of a modern, fairer and prosperous Britain. Discrimination has no place in our society.” The Right Honourable Tony Blair.

Inequality and discrimination have serious and sometimes devastating effects on people’s lives. Stories of people who have been dismissed from their jobs on the grounds of their religious beliefs or sexual orientation, for example, have become commonplace. And, people’s understanding of their rights is often limited with many feeling helpless and isolated. Until now.

Later this year, the Commission for Equality and Human Rights will come into being and will act as a single body charged with the responsibility of addressing discrimination on grounds of a person’s gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, age or disability.

The Commission’s brief will go beyond simply tackling discrimination, to demonstrating and sharing best practice and promoting equal opportunities and human rights principles both within the workplace and the wider community.

Fundamentally, the Commission – a combination of the Disability Rights Commission and the Equal Opportunities
Commission – will be responsible for promoting and enforcing the equality legislation, advising Government and adhering to the key gender equality challenges it has been set:

Equality at work
A main priority for the CEHR will be to ensure that employers take urgent action to review their current practices. For instance, to look at things like the level of pay between men and women doing the same job and removing any barriers that may exist which restrict ethnic minority women within the workplace.

Safe communities
The CEHR will take an active role in helping to benefit some of the most vulnerable and least represented people in our society, including victims of domestic abuse, rape, forced marriage and women who have suffered violence
as a consequence of illegal trafficking. It will also seek to address the tensions and promote good relations between and within groups in their local communities.

Equal power
Key to creating truly representative systems is the CEHR’s drive to ensure that people from all backgrounds get into positions of leadership. This will require businesses, political parties and the Welsh Assembly to recognise the barriers preventing participation and implementing measures to overcome them.

Public services for everyone
The Welsh Assembly Government is fully committed to ensuring that Welsh interests are represented and, together with the CEHR, it will work to ensure that there is an equality outcome for every pound of taxpayers money spent and guarantee that gender equality is central to the delivery of public services.

Help and support
By October, the CEHR in Wales will set up a Helpline and a website that will provide information, advice and assistance to individuals about their rights.

Creating a new legislative body with enhanced powers and a strong commitment to deliver and make fundamental changes to people’s lives, will not be easy. But, by streamlining and combining the resources of the DRC and EOC from October, equality, discrimination, diversity and human rights concerns can all be tackled from a more effective single place.

Indeed, as Mr Blair put it: “Extending opportunities to all means removing unfair barriers. Delivering prosperity for all means harnessing the skills and potential of every member of society, whatever their background”.

(Picture: Graphic of cut out paper men and women holding hands)