Latest Diversity News

• Retirement is out of date
• New sign language
• Lesbian soldier could receive £400,000 after winning sex discrimination case
• ' White flight' increasing, race chief says
• Police forces win gay vote
• Time for diversity to find its voice?
  

Retirement is out of date

According to the Office for National Statistics, one thing came between Britain and the credit crunch last quarter, and that was the entry of older workers into the labour market. There were 175,000 jobs created in the three months to November, of which more than half, 90,000, were filled by people over 50.

The notion that people are still being hired as they head for what was once, laughably, called the retirement age should cheer us up.  A workforce that brings together energetic Poles and hardy Brits of the war generation seems rather a good combination given the dearth of skills and any discernible work ethic among many school leavers.

It's also a hopeful trend, given that we're all heading for an extended old age.  Average life expectancy for a professional man is 80, an increase of seven years since the 1970s. 

Younger workers may have the edge in rapid-reaction work but an older generation's experience and life skills are unquantifiable assets.  If you ask me, we should all be taking our lead from the Pope, who, at 80, is only getting into the swing of his job. At the Nationwide Building Society, the retirement age is now 75.

One of the messengers in my office had to retire at 81 because his wife was ill - “I wouldn't go otherwise, Mel”, he told me sorrowfully - and another, in his sixties, says he's staying as long as possible: “This place is like my family.” There are lots more like them, people whose jobs wouldn't feature on a school leaver's wish list, but for whom life without work is short on human interest. And money. As ever, equality legislation is simply keeping pace with reality - age discrimination is not merely illegal; it now looks irrational too.

New sign language

A new vocabulary of sign language that will revolutionise the way science is taught to deaf children in schools throughout Britain has been developed by teachers and language specialists in Edinburgh.

Over the past year a glossary of more than 250 signs for scientific terms has been created that can be accessed over the internet by teachers, interpreters and pupils. Terms of daunting complexity – such as “photosynthesis”, “density” or “bacteria” — are explained by on-screen tutors who employ simple but descriptive gestures that suddenly create understanding.

Many pupils with perfect hearing find scientific terminology hard to comprehend, but for a deaf child the difficulties multiply. Nuances in the meaning of words such as “virus” make signed explanations difficult, and spelling out words letter-by-letter often leads to confusion.

“The scientific vocabulary for deaf children has developed simply because we needed it,” said Rachel O’Neill, a lecturer in deaf education at the University of Edinburgh. “People realised that there weren’t enough deaf teachers in schools and that finger spelling doesn’t work for complex subjects. You have to be able to understand the English first and then the concept and that can all be very difficult.”  Problems can be compounded because, with little access to the spoken word, deaf children often have poor reading skills, Ms O’Neill added.

By contrast, the simple gestures employed by the new system, unveiled yesterday at the University of Edinburgh, brought gasps of recognition when they were demonstrated to an audience of deaf children and their teachers.

The Times - January 19, 2008

Lesbian soldier could receive £400,000 after winning sex discrimination case

The Army could be facing a payout of almost £400,000 after a lesbian soldier's claim for sex discrimination and discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was upheld in court.

An employment tribunal in Leeds ruled that Kerry Fletcher had her career cut short by the unwanted sexual advances of a senior male colleague, who victimised her with text messages and propositioned her.

Fletcher, who joined the Royal Artillery in 2004, is claiming £381,000 compensation, based on the wages she would have earned if she had stayed in service for 12 years as she had planned.

The sexual harassment took place at the Royal Artillery's facility at RAF Topcliffe, North Yorkshire. The tribunal heard that a senior sergent had sent Fletcher a series of smutty text messages, boasting her could 'turn her straight'.

Damages will be awarded at separate remedy hearing.

Personnel Today, 17 January, 2008

'White flight' increasing, race chief says

The flight of the white middle classes from the inner cities is accelerating, the Government's race relations chief has said. Trevor Phillips said so-called ''white flight" - an American phenomenon now increasingly seen here - was deepening racial segregation.

Mr Phillips has warned in the past of the growing polarisation of the country along ethnic lines. But his use of the emotive term ''white flight" will fuel the controversy triggered by the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester. He said last week some Muslim enclaves were "no-go areas" for Christians and there was a need for greater integration.

Mr Phillips, who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the Bishop was right to raise the issue because white families were moving out of areas with high ethnic minority populations. Interviewed on Radio Four's Today programme, he said: ''There are areas in which there is no contact or very little contact between different ethnic and cultural groups.

"Nobody is putting up walls and gates but we all know that in virtually every big city there are places where different kinds of people feel uncomfortable, whether that is Asians in so-called white areas or white people in so-called black areas."

He added: "We know that white flight is accelerating. That schools - we know this from studies done by Bristol University - are becoming more segregated than the areas they sit in. So there is a phenomenon we have to deal with and I think that the Bishop of Rochester was right to raise this."

The term "white flight" was coined in 1960s America to describe the emergence of inner city ghettos. However, Government ministers have preferred to refer to it as ''churn" and to attribute the movement of people to house price fluctuations.

A survey conducted by the old Commission for Racial Equality in 2006 found that a quarter of Britons wanted to live in an all-white area. The movement has been especially notable in London, which has always seen a big turnover of population, and is now witnessing unprecedented movement. Last year, nearly 245,000 people left inner boroughs for the suburbs, rural areas, or new lives abroad. The movement has a bigger impact in northern cities where communities already live "parallel lives". As a consequence they become "shut off" and vulnerable to political and religious extremism. Research by Migrationwatch suggests movement within Britain is mainly from areas of high ethnic minority population to those with predominantly white populations.

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, praised Mr Phillips for confronting the evidence of "white flight".

"This is another courageous contribution from Trevor Phillips, who is clearly prepared to face the facts about the current strains in our society," he said.  "We would add - although he does not - that massive levels of immigration are a significant factor in this."

Daily Telegraph, 16 January 2008

Police forces win gay vote

POLICE may be unhappy with their pay, but they can console themselves with the news that they are now among the UK’s most gay-friendly employers.

Hampshire Constabulary and Staffordshire Police ranked joint third in Stonewall’s annual list. Indeed, the public sector as a whole acquitted itself well, accounting for six of the top ten, with the others being the Greater London Authority (2nd), Manchester City Council (joint 6th), Transport for London (joint 6th) and Brighton and Hove City Council (9th).

Nacro, the crime reduction charity, became the first voluntary organisation to top the chart. “The fact that we have openly gay staff has encouraged gay service-users to come forward with their specific needs,” Paul Cavadino, the charity’s chief executive, told Third Sector (Jan 9).

But charities should not feel smug about Nacro’s success. David Shields, Stonewall’s director of workplace programmes, says it was disappointing that only 19 of the 340 members of its Diversity Champions programme were from the voluntary sector.

The Times, 15 January, 2008

Time for diversity to find its voice?

The creation of a new body representing equality and diversity professionals seems to be edging ever closer following the publication of a study by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

Initial research last summer overwhelmingly found that employees in these fields would welcome a new professional association to help establish industry standards and define proper career paths. At the time, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Develop­ment (CIPD) said the formation of the Association of Diversity and Equality Practitioners - or whatever it might eventually be called - was a "gung-ho" approach, and that more research was required.

Well, the LSC went away and did that research as part of a detailed consultation process with practitioners and interested parties. And guess what? It has come to the same conclusion. So it seems there is a definite gap in the support available in developing skills and championing equality and diversity.

On the face of it, a new membership organisation makes sense. Equality and diversity is not just about employment, but about all aspects of an organisation's work and functions. If the specialisms are not going to be seen as 'just another HR initiative', then maybe the time has come for the practitioners to have their own voice.

A new body could offer training and development to boost skills, undertake research projects and potentially introduce a range of accredited qualifications for those working at all levels.

Personnel Today, 14 January, 2008

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