How has the Bill changed?
The House of Commons have approved the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill (the Bill), albeit in a form that is significantly less onerous than had been originally proposed.
As originally proposed, the Bill would have:
- imposed liabilities on employers for failure to take “all reasonable steps” to protect their staff from third party harassment (essentially seeking to re-create protections that previously existed under the Equality Act 2010, which were removed by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2003); and
- created a new legal duty for employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of staff during the course of employment. This duty was stated to be enforceable by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
In the version of the Bill that was approved, item one above was removed in its entirety. Item two was recast to require the employer to take “reasonable steps”, rather than “all reasonable steps” to prevent the sexual harassment of their staff.
The net result is that rather than establishing a duty for employers to protect their employees against third party harassment on the basis of any protected characteristic, the Bill now only establishes a duty in relation to “sexual harassment”, as defined under the Equality Act 2010.Continue Reading Sexual harassment in the workplace: Update on the Worker Protection (amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill in the United Kingdom