On May 9th, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) hosted a conference on the theme of Achieving Equality at Work - Promoting Socio-Economic Equality in Employment .
IHREC noted that the aim of this conference was “to examine ways to promote socio-economic equality in employment in practice for socio-economically disadvantaged groups”. And that an “important way to achieve this is to support employers to take positive actions as part of their commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion to enable these groups to gain employment and progress in the workplace”.
The INOU participated in one of the morning panels, which focused on Tackling Socio-Economic Inequality in Employment. In the presentation we noted that:
- In our work with other CVS organisations, a number of issues arise regularly, including address, accent, how people look, how they dress, the schools they went to, the type of accommodation they live in, whether or not they are employed.
- In keeping with the experiences of people from ethnic minorities, people facing socio-economic discrimination often experience it at both an individual, familial and communal level.
- This in turn impacts on peoples' experiences of a range of services and opportunities including education, health, economic and social services.
- There is a well-established correlation between educational status and employment status.
Two of the learners on the INOU’s Building Futures course participated on the panel in the afternoon workshop on Employment of Long-term Unemployed People - Accessing and Progressing in Decent Work. This workshop sought:
- To understand the barriers to employment from the perspective of people with lived experience of long-term-unemployment
- To take into account that some long-term unemployed people have multiple barriers to overcome.
- To showcase supports and ways and means to overcome those barriers and examples of good practices, including employment support programmes, social enterprise and community benefit clauses in public procurement
- To enable participants to leave with the ways and means to practically reach, and support the inclusion of people with disabilities/disabled people to access decent work and thrive in their workplaces.
Amongst the issues raised at this workshop was the importance of community and adult education in creating opportunities for people who are long-term unemployed, who have faced a range of challenges in their lives to be able to articulate these issues, explore meaningful options, and progress into further / higher education and / or employment opportunities.
In the week of this conference IHREC published a Policy Statement on Socio-Economic Status as a ground of discrimination under the Equality Acts In the recommendations at the beginning of this report IHREC states that the “Commission reaffirms its position that Irish equality law should be amended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of socio-economic status.
The Commission recommends that:
- an asymmetric approach is applied in defining the new socio-economic status ground.
- indicators are included within the definition of the ground.
- thorough research, including consultation with minoritised groups, is carried out by the State to determine the most effective indicators.
- the provision ‘other than on a temporary basis’ is removed from the definition of socio-economic disadvantage in the 2021 Bill.
- the provision ‘socially or geographically identifiable group’ is removed from the definition of socio-economic disadvantage in the 2021 Bill.
- further consideration is given to the rationale for the comparisons between persons of different socio-economic status in sections 3, 4 and 8 of the 2021 Bill.”
The INOU is part of Add the 10th Alliance which is proposing the following as a potential definition of socio-economic status:
“Socio-economic status means social or economic disadvantage resulting from one or more of the following circumstances: a) poverty, b) source of income, c) illiteracy, d) level of education, e) address, type of housing or homelessness, f) employment status, g) social or regional accent, or from any other similar circumstance;”