this week in diversity

1. SOME DIVERSITY STATISTICS
2. ANTI-DISCRIMINATION: a quick summary of things we need to know

• In 2008, 58% of women of working age were in paid employment. (In June 1982, 45% of women of working age were in paid employment).
• 26% of the Australian workforce was born overseas.
• Workers aged 45 and over currently make up nearly two-fifths of the workforce - 38% in 2008.
• In Australia in 2008, 28% of employed people work part-time (less than 35 hours per week). Australia has a higher percentage of part-time workers than New Zealand, the UK, USA or Canada.
• 12% of the full-time workforce are also carers of people with disability or the aged.

• Anti-discrimination law explicitly recognises that special measures are not discriminatory where they provide a benefit to members of an Equal Employment Opportunity group (ie.,women; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; racial, ethnic and ethno-religious minority groups; and people with disabilities);
• aim to assist the group to achieve "substantive equality";
• are necessary to achieve that aim; and
• stop once the aim has been achieved.

For example, Aboriginal people from Palm Island claimed that they had been discriminated against by state laws that had been effective in the 1970s. These provided for them to be paid lower wages than non-Aboriginal workers. The Queensland Government argued that these laws were not discriminatory because the purpose of the laws was to further the 'development, education and training' of Aboriginal people and they were therefore "special measures".

However, Commissioner Carter found that the legislation was racially discriminatory and could not be termed a special measure:
"One can safely assume that any of the complainants would now rightly and strongly reject the notion that the administration of the 1971 Acts and 1972 Regulations on Palm Island, particularly in relation to matters of employment and wages, were for their benefit or in accordance with their wishes. On the contrary they might well regard the administration of the Queensland laws as part and parcel of the implementation process of a government policy which was intensely paternalistic, the practical effect of which was to demean them and to lower their self respect rather [than] to ensure their enjoyment of and the exercise of their human rights to, inter alia, 'equal pay for equal work'."

[Bligh and others v State of Queensland [1996] HREOCA 28 (24 September 1996)]

Other examples include:

• not accepting an enrolment from someone who is deaf because you are worried staff and students won't be able to communicate with her.
• not allowing someone to enrol in a course because she has a disability and you think that people with that disability won't be able to fulfil course requirements.
• refusing to allow a student with epilepsy to participate in a work-experience practicum because you are worried that they may have an epileptic seizure and put their safety at risk.

Reasonable Adjustment

Educational institutions must provide reasonable adjustments to assist students with disabilities to perform jobs and undertake studies unless this would cause "unjustifiable hardship" to the organisation.

Whether or not something would be an "unjustifiable hardship" must be considered on a case-by-case basis taking into account factors such as the cost of making adjustments compared to the overall budget of the organisation. An adjustment that might cause hardship for a small training organization might be very reasonable for a large training institution.

In addition to the national laws prohibiting discrimination and harassment at work on the grounds of race, sex, disability and age, each state and territory has its own legislation which covers additional types of discrimination.

In Queensland, the following types of discrimination are also prohibited: