Legal Considerations For Job Opportunities For Refugees And African Women In The UK

Refugees hostel workers and their legal rights in UK

The first job description providing job to the African women and the refugees as the hostel workers is legal in accordance with the equality and the diversity laws of United Kingdom. According the equality Act 2010, the refugees residing in U.K are liable to get equal rights just as the other residents of United Kingdom. It is this act that protects the migrants against race discrimination such as the nationality, ethnic origin and colors (Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2010).

It has to be noted that the ethnic minorities in United Kingdom faces significant barriers in the social mobility and discrimination in terms of employments in spite of having better qualifications than their white counterparts. Hence, the refugees and the Africans should have the same protection against discrimination at workplace, on the grounds of gender assignment, race, religion, disability, age and sexual orientation. All the job selections has to be on the basis of the suitability of the posts. Refugees are not the part of the points-based system, where all the migrants have to meet certain skills, requirements and experience levels to apply jobs. They are able to work in United Kingdom without any restrictions like the other employees in UK as per the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights act 1998 (England and Henry 2013). It is the Equality act that imposes positive obligations on the public authorities. The act does not specifically consider the migrants, but is applicable to all people. The legal opinion by the equality and the Human rights commission has confirmed that people who are under the immigration control should not be exempted from the immigration control. There are several rules that has been introduced to provide equal job opportunities to the refugees and Black African women. Once an individual have claimed for an asylum and have been given a refugee status, the asylum support stops 28 days after the decision. For example an individual would stop getting the case allowance kept for the asylum seekers. Once, someone have received the refugee status, an individual can get permission to work in United Kingdom in any profession and at any skill level. There are a lot more support service for the refugees in UK. The United Kingdom provides very limited refugee resettlement programs where only the selected residents are allowed to come and settle in UK without passing through the asylum process. Before appointing the individual for the work there are certain things that has to be checked before the appointment (Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2010). The home office issues a biometric Residence Permit or an immigration status document to the refugees when they are granted with the leave to reside in UK. Some of the main documents that are required are the Biometric Residence Permit and Immigration status document. Such work permit can pave the way for the migrants and the ethnic minorities to work in United Kingdom without any discrimination (Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2010).

While scrutinizing these two advertisements, concepts of positive action should be taken in to consideration. Positive action can be defined as the action that an employer takes for helping or encouraging some unprivileged group of people such as the refugees and the asylum seekers or people with any sort of disabilities. It is evident from the initial advertisement that the job is open for specifically the African women aged 18-30 years (Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2012). African refugees have to face a lot of workplace discrimination  and unfortunately, it has been found that the Black African women experience face the largest full time gender pay gap of about 19.6 % in United Kingdom (Thompson 2016). The African refugees have not seen any improvement in closing the gender pay gap. This provides a clear picture of the pay gap related to ethnic minorities and gender. According to Roberts, Davies and Jupp  (2014) refugees and the asylum seekers might have several disadvantages or needs that are different from the disadvantages and the needs of other people. The experience of the migrant women might not be same as that of the non- migrants.  Hence, such an initiative to support the black African women are commendable and hence comes after positive actions.  Positive actions are lawful under the equality Act 2010. Hence, it can be said that job no. 1 is legal in terms of the advertisement policies (Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2012). According to the equality Act 2010, employers can give advantages to certain disadvantaged group of people for accessing the training and the employment and can be referred to as positive action. Again, it is evident from the advertisement that the employers were looking for the refugee workers those who have strong interest for the delivery of the public services, thus providing the scope of social inclusion. A two year management training program to the refugees will empower them with suitable qualification to apply for the job. Provision of the job opportunities to the refugees helps these people in assimilating in the new country. Furthermore there had been reports which proves that assimilating such person at the workplace not only benefits the economy, but their innovative talents can really be beneficial for the workplace. Provision of chance to the refugees in getting in to social work services will help in cultural assimilation of the African black women and would also help them to build a better future other than depending on government grants. While discussing about human rights and equality act, it should be noted that positive discriminate is unlawful in United Kingdom that is an employer recruiting a person due to the presence of some relevant protective characteristics, is something that is not applicable in United Kingdom. It is also unlawful for setting quotas for recruiting specific people with some protected characteristics. In this context, this job is lawful as the job posted is open to all persons, including the African women.

Positive action in job selection process

The equality Act involves equal treatment in all sectors including the employment in the private as well as the public services, irrespective of any protected characteristics, gender, age race, religion, beliefs and sexual orientation (Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2010). But in this case it can be found that the employers are providing IT & communication opportunities to those who does not have any experience. Those who are having an experience in the IT and the communication are not eligible to register for this job. Positive action should not be confused with positive discrimination. Positive action means that the employers can hire the candidates from the protected class provided they meet the eligibility criteria just like the other applicants. For example, a black women could be hired a white women, provided that they possess the almost the same skill set. Again positive action is not same as positive discrimination, in which preferential treatment is given to the applicants from the disadvantaged groups, regardless of their ability to do the work. This job position cannot be considered as a positive action as it is not providing any measures to target the protected groups such as the ones with disabilities, or the refugees and the asylum seekers. In this IT and communication job, placements are only provided to the ones who does not have any prior experience about IT & communication. It can be clearly seen that in this job, the applicants having prior knowledge of IT and communication should perform much more in comparison to the novice, yet the applications from the experienced ones will not be included.  In United Kingdom it is unlawful to provide added advantage to any such groups as those people having prior training are also educationally eligible to apply for the post (Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2010). Again, it has been mentioned that the person has to be a resident of the EEA. But there are provisions where workers might ask for a work permit before wishing to enter UK for the job. Hence in this case the candidates do not have to the members of the EEA. Non- EEA residents can easily apply for the work permits under the Point based system, which is a way to manage the migrants who wish to enter United Kingdom for working and studying (Legislation.gov.uk. 2018). In such case the employers have to apply for the work permit of the employees.  Here the approach of the advertisement should not be confused with positive action. One can relate this with positive discrimination, as the job is only applicable to the ones having no further knowledge about Information technology. Positive discrimination in United Kingdom is not acceptable under law (Legislation.gov.uk. 2018). An employer should not choose a candidate having a protected characteristics rather than the one who has the eligibility criteria. This is causing discrimination under the equality act 2010 (Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2010). This job description might be brought under indirect discrimination under equality act 2010. Indirect discrimination occurs when there is a policy or rule that is applicable to everyone in the same way, but is having an adverse effect in some of the people. As per this job description, the eligibility criterion of the job is putting some people at a particular disadvantage.  In order to represent the diversity of our society in a better way the candidates should be chosen solely on the basis of the talents, which will help in the assimilation of old and the new talents providing with the opportunities to the fresher to learn about new things (Klarsfeld and Tatli 2012).

Job 2: IT and communication opportunity – corrective actions needed

Diversity and equality in a workplace is necessary to build an inclusive workplace (Kumra, Manfredi and Vickers 2012). There should be practices and procedures to ensure that all the workers are treated equally and the opportunities are being provided equally irrespective of the race, age, gender, sexuality, disability. Diversity normally takes a more positive outlook and there is still a need to check that stereotyping and   discrimination does not play any part in the recruitment process (Klarsfeld and Tatli 2012). But it is important to value the differences between each and every people understanding the positive usefulness of employing different types of employees. It should be mentioned that a positive approach ensures that the best candidate is selected, based on the merit, free form all kinds of biases. Employers taking this approach are considered to be positive, fair and progressive. Any recruitment should be made entirely on the basis of the talents. Hence the companies in the U.K should be legally required to follow a set of practices for ensuring that the discrimination is eradicated and the expectations are met at the workplace . As the position description of this job, it has been mentioned that, this is exclusively for drawing the youths towards IT, but it can also be done by providing them with free training. Excluding the ones who are eligible for the job would cause a direct breach of the equality rights. The U.K legislation covers both the direct and the indirect discrimination and the individuals  or the organization indulging any kind of discriminatory recruitment are accountable for the  breaching of the equality act (Roberts, Davies and Jupp 2014). There are Utilitarian arguments as to novices should be provided with job opportunities, but they should be trained first. Different jobs require different skills and personality traits and to ensure that the productivity of the company becomes maximum, hence it is important for organization to recruit people competent for the job. As per the utilitarian viewpoints, job discrimination causes violation of the principles of justice (Thompson 2016).

Thus it can be said, that the advertisement posted for this job is not illegal as it is causing an indirect breaching of equality law, 2010 (Kumra, Manfredi and Vickers 2012).  

References

England, K. and Henry, C., 2013. Care work, migration and citizenship: international nurses in the UK. Social & Cultural Geography, 14(5), pp.558-574.

Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2010. Equality Act 2010: Summary Guidance on Employment. 2010. Access date: 12.12. 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com

Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2012 .Employing Refugees. Access date: 12.12.2018. Retrieved from: https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/assets/0003/4097/Employing_Refugees_-_Guide_to_documents_required_Dec_2014.pdf

Klarsfeld, A., Ng, E. and Tatli, A., 2012. Social regulation and diversity management: A comparative study of France, Canada and the UK. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 18(4), pp.309-327.

Kumra, S., Manfredi, S. and Vickers, L., 2012. Managing equality and diversity: Theory and practice. Oxford University Press.

Legislation.gov.uk. 2018. Equality Act 2010. Access date: 12.12.2018. Retrieved from: https://www.legislation.gov.uk

Roberts, C., Davies, E. and Jupp, T., 2014. Language and discrimination. Routledge.

Thompson, N., 2016. Anti-discriminatory practice: Equality, diversity and social justice. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Sargeant, M., 2016. Age discrimination in employment. Routledge.