Tag Archives: Employment Rights

We’ve All Heard Of The Gender Pay Gap, But Should We Be More Concerned By The ‘Gay Pay Gap’ Instead?

We’ve all heard of the gender pay gap. But how about the gay pay gap?

Studies carried in the US, Europe and Australia have revealed that gay men get paid up less than their straight counterparts.

Lesbians, however, have been shown to make more than their straight female counterparts, with studies estimate the differential to be between 8% to 13%.

Despite this, lesbians still earn less than either heterosexual or gay men, the studies show.

And according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, transgender people are four times as likely to have a household income under $10,000 and twice as likely to be unemployed as the typical person.

The problem we have and what all the studies concluded is that sexual orientation pay gap comes down to prejudice. Something we are all still trying to tackle.

There are still some many laws around the world that do not support LGBT employees. The fight for equality is still real.

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Campaigners Calculate Women Will Be ‘Working For Free Until The End If The Year’ Due Gender Wage Gap

The gap in average pay gap between women and men is around 14.2%. Which means, if you’re a woman who works full time you will effectively be working for free from now until January.

So today is Equal Pay Day – the point in the year at which the average woman in full-time employment is said to stop earning, in effect, compared with male counterparts.

The date changes each year and 2015’s Equal Pay Day is five days later than 2014’s, indicating that the pay gap has narrowed slightly.

Sam Smethers, chief executive of gender equality charity the Fawcett Society, said at the current rate of progress it would take 50 years to close the gender pay gap.

Women should not have to wait that long.”

The ONS figures show the gender gap is widest at the age of 50-59, when it rises to 20.5%.

Google, IBM, Microsoft, And Others Big Organisations Commit To Improving Workplace Equality For LGBT Employees

This week, at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Human Rights Campaign announced a new global coalition of companies committed to making workplaces around the world fair and equal for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees. The founding members of the coalition include Google, IBM, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and AT&T.

Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said in a statement.

We are proud to bring together some of the world’s largest companies to advance LGBT equality around the globe. These corporate leaders, which employ 1.4 million employees worldwide, understand that equality, inclusion, and engagement are pivotal to business success. Today, they are sending a resounding message that LGBT people are valued, they are equal, and they deserve a fair chance to earn a living and provide for their families no matter where they live.”

Members of the coalition agree to implement non-discrimination statements and codes of conduct that are inclusive to LGBT workers. They will also host summits in international markets to promote LGBT workplace equality and will create resource groups specifically for LGBT employees.

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In a statement, Microsoft president Brad Smith said,

The strengthening of LGBT equality in the workplace makes good sense for companies and for people. We’re committed to treating all of our employees equally, with the respect and dignity they so clearly deserve.”

Other founding members of the coalition are Accenture, CA Technologies, Destination Weddings Travel Group, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, Replacements, Ltd., and Symantec Corp.

Discrimination Against LGBT Employees is Illegal in America

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has decided this week that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal by existing laws.

The landmark ruling could now extend to new rights for LGBT Americans.

The decision was rooted in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans employment discrimination “based on race, colour, religion, sex and national origin.”

Before now, courts have generally held that sexual orientation is not protected by this clause because the term is not explicitly listed and interpreting it as such was not the intention of the legislators behind the law.

But in its 3-2 vote ruling, the commission reasons that any employment decision based on someone’s sexual orientation must also inherently take into account his or her gender, pushing the question under the umbrella of the law’s language.

The decision reads

For example, assume that an employer suspends a female employee for displaying a photo of her female spouse on her desk, but does not suspend a male employee for displaying a photo of his female spouse.

‘Sexual orientation’ as a concept cannot be defined or understood without reference to sex.”

The case in question was a complaint filed against transportation secretary Anthony Foxx in which a Florida air traffic controller alleges he was passed over for a job because he is gay.

The ruling is not definitive until it is solidified by legislation or a Supreme Court decision, but it does carry significant weight in courts across the country.

The decision claimed that earlier circuit court rulings on the matter have been grounded in “dated” precedents without any additional analysis. More recent legal precedents in the same courts, the commission goes on, have recognised that

gender stereotyping — which includes anti-gay remarks — is considered sex discrimination.

As Time points out, this is the same logic that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts used when considering same-sex marriage earlier this year before ultimately opposing it.

Justice John Roberts said in April,

If Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can’t. And the difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?”

In 2012, the commission ruled in a similar case that the same law protected gender identity when a transgender woman claimed she was denied a job at the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives because of her transition.

Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffen praised the decision but called on legislators to bolster it and other LGBT civil rights issues by setting them into law.
Griffen said in a statement

While an important step, it also highlights the need for a comprehensive federal law permanently and clearly banning LGBT discrimination beyond employment to all areas of American life,”

Andreessens Give $250,000 to LGBT Groups, Trans*H4CK and Lesbians Who Tech

Famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and philanthropist Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, are giving $250,000 to two LGBTQ organisations, USA Today reports.

One of these is Lesbians Who Tech, an organisation that supports and connects gay women in the tech industry through events in the US and abroad. The organisation will use its $165,000 gift to launch two pilot programs. Bring a Lesbian to Work Day will provide shadowing opportunities for gay women considering a career in tech and match them with mentors, while the Coding Scholarship Fund will help with tuition assistance for attending coding schools.

The other is Trans*H4CK, a nonprofit that puts on hackathons to develop new tech products for the trans and gender non-conforming communities. Trans*H4CK will use its $85,000 grant to build an online hackathon space and education center to help build more apps and other tech for the transgender community.

Arrillaga-Andreessen told USA TODAY in an interview.

We are just thrilled that there are two such high potential organizations that already have demonstrated measurable impact that we can support to create an even broader sense of inclusion in the technology sector.”

For years Silicon Valley has positioned itself at the forefront of the gay rights struggle. And, from rainbow emoji on social media to colourful floats in the Pride parade in San Francisco, the technology industry publicly celebrated the Supreme Court’s embrace of same-sex marriage this weekend.

Yet while many in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are optimistic about the advances being made in the industry and in society at large, they say Silicon Valley is still very much a straight man’s world, not as accepting and welcoming as it should be.

Natalie Johnson, a partner with Paradigm, a strategy firm that consults with tech companies on diversity and inclusion.

It’s great that many companies are supportive of LGBT rights and issues, because that support draws attention to some of the challenges LGBT individuals face. But that external support isn’t enough to create a welcoming and inclusive culture for the LGBT community within a company.”

Inclusion is the hallmark of a series of grants the Andreessens are making to groups that are on the front lines of bringing greater diversity to the white-and-Asian-male-dominated technology industry.

Under Gay Propaganda Law, Russian Court Says Lesbian Is Unfit To Teach

A St. Petersburg school teacher was fired in December 2014 for her lesbian social media activity.

The teacher, only identified by her first name, Alevtina, was sacked because her employer said her behaviour was incompatible with her job.

She last week lost a court appeal to be reinstated, but plans to continue to fight the ruling.

A court called upon “experts” to analyze the teacher’s photos on VKontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, and declared them “extremely unacceptable from a moral point of view.”

Alevtina appealed to the court in January to get her job back plus a compensation of 300,000 rubles, or around $5,600, for emotional distress. Her appeal was rejected last week on the grounds that she had committed “acts of indecency.”

She lost her job in December because of the crusading of Timur Isayev, who has made a career of outing school teachers who post expressions of homosexuality online. He claims their outward homosexuality violates Russia’s law against “gay propaganda.” Isayev said in December he had gotten 29 teachers fired for being gay.

On forwarding the photo to the school, Isaev wrote: “You have an unhealthy, psychologically abnormal lesbian teacher working for you.

This teacher openly reveals on social media that she is an immoral lesbian and that she lives or co-habitates with another unhealthy woman just like herself.We strongly urge you to dismiss her for incompetence in the profession.”

Gay people have faced increasing issues in Russia since President Vladimir Putin in 2013 signed a federal law banning the “promotion of non-tradtional sexual relations”.

The teacher told Meduza she “proudly wiped her tears” after hearing the court rejected her appeal. She might file suit with the European Court of Human Rights, the thorn in Russia’s legal side, she said. But even if she were to prevail in the European court, while she might get some compensation, there is not much precedence to show she would get her job back.

It’s not illegal to be gay in Russia, but the law against gay propaganda that president Vladimir Putin passed in 2013 essentially lets the government crack down on anyone it believes is being too public or flamboyant about their sexual preferences.

Study Finds That Being Out Does Harm Your Ability to Get a Job, Especially in Traditionally Male & Female Dominated Roles

A new study shows that discrimination of gay and lesbian job seekers is commonplace within both private firms and the public sector in the UK.

The research, carried out by Dr Nick Drydakis of Anglia Ruskin University and published by SAGE in the journal Human Relations, involved 144 young people — all first-time job seekers — making 11,098 applications.

The study, the first of its kind ever conducted in the UK, found that gay applicants of both sexes are 5% less likely to be offered a job interview than heterosexual applicants with comparable skills and experience.

The firms who offer interviews to gay male candidates pay an average salary of 2.0% less than those who invite heterosexuals for interview (£23,072 compared to £23,544). For lesbian women the average salary is 1.4% less (£22,569 compared to £22,907).

Gay men receive the fewest invitations for interviews in traditionally male-dominated occupations (accounting, banking, finance and management jobs), whereas lesbians receive the fewest invitations for interviews in traditionally female-dominated occupations (social care, social services and charity jobs).

In the accounting, banking, finance and management sector, the study found 74 occasions when only the heterosexual candidate was offered an interview and not the gay male candidate with comparable skills and experience, but no instances of only the gay male candidate being offered an interview.

Similarly, there were 63 examples when only heterosexual women were offered an interview in the social care, social services and charity sector, but no examples of only the lesbian candidate being offered an interview.

The study was carried out with the help of 12 students’ unions at universities across Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Of the 2,312 students who volunteered for the study, Dr Drydakis was able to match 72 students whose CVs mentioned having a prominent role in their university’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) society with 72 students whose skills and experiences were identical, but whose CV didn’t indicate their sexuality.

The participants were all third-year undergraduates, 21 years old, British nationals and unmarried. They were all predicted to achieve an upper second class degree (2:1).

In pairs, the 144 students applied for 5,549 jobs (11,098 separate applications) that had been advertised on 15 of the UK’s leading recruitment websites over a two-month period.

Dr Drydakis, Reader in Economics at Anglia Ruskin University, said:

Because of the limited research carried out so far into the experiences of gays and lesbians in the labour market, the disadvantages and discrimination they experience has gone unnoticed and therefore unchallenged.

Despite measures to encourage openness and discourage discrimination, including the introduction of the Equality Act of 2010, it is evident from my research that gays and lesbians are encountering serious misconceptions and barriers in the job market.

It is also clear that people who face biased treatment in the hiring process must spend more time and resources finding jobs, and firms lose potential talent as a result of biased hiring.”

30% Of Gay And Bisexual Employees In Ireland Have Faced Discrimination

In a survey conducted in 2013, 73% of people in the Republic of Ireland said that “same sex marriage should be allowed in the Constitution” and in 2008, 84% said that they supported same-sex marriage rights and/or civil partnerships.

However, just because most of a country is in favour of marriage equality, it doesn’t mean that it is an all round tolerant one. Like many places in the world, progressive thinking is let down by pockets of anti-LGBT opinions.

The attitudes towards LGBT people have improved greatly in Ireland over the past few years but the predominantly Catholic country does trail behind some of its European brethren. For example, in the UK homosexuality became decriminalised between 1967 and 1982 but it took until 1993 for the same to happen in ROI.

Perhaps that fact is why it appears to have taken much longer for discrimination to be phased out of the Irish workplace. Although “most” forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation are illegal in the country, a new study deems that some people ignore this and that many gay and bisexual employees continue to face discrimination.

According to the survey, a massive 30% of gay and bisexual workers in Ireland have faced discrimination. While full details weren’t provided, we do know that the discrimination involved harassment and in 1 in 10 cases, the employee chose to quit their jobs over it.

Those figures are astonishing (again, since Ireland’s laws forbid this type of behaviour) and so the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) is launching Ireland’s very first Workplace Equality Index.

As explained by Director of Workplace Diversity at GLEN, Davin Roche in a statement below, GLEN’s new initiative will inform people on which employers are the most LGBT-friendly and will also encourage those who are failing to do more to be inclusive:

“Research in Ireland and internationally has found, unfortunately, far too many LGBT employees have experienced harassment at work or have quit a job because of discrimination and we know that many LGBT employees are not comfortable disclosing their sexual orientation at work. We know this can be detrimental to LGBT employees but also has a negative impact for employers.”

Having launched on February 10th, 2015, it’s still incredibly early days just yet, but we will keep you posted once we know more.

New Zealand Lesbian Couple Rejected For Job Because Of Their Sexuality

A lesbian couple from New Zealand say they’re the victims of discrimination after they were turned down for a job because of their sexuality.

The couple,Emily Carter and Danika Te Moananui, say their skills and experience counted for nothing when they applied to manage Whitianga’s Mercury Bay Holiday Park, and were told they weren’t a traditional male/female couple so their application to manage a holiday park was rejected.

The holiday park owner told them:

“A man is required to attend to male aspects of our clientele, and similarly a female for feminine issues. If you better read and understood the position you were applying for then you could have saved yourself whatever embarrassment may have occurred, none on my part.”

The ad never specified a man and woman; it simply asked for a “multi-skilled couple”.

“There’s no such thing as a traditional couple anymore. There’s just people who love each other and we’re all people.”

Emily Carter and Danika Te Moananui

New Zealand’s Human Rights Commission wouldn’t talk about this case but said:

“It is illegal to discriminate on the grounds of sex in New Zealand unless there is a genuine occupational requirement.”

Stonewall Publishes Top 100 Gay-Friendly Employers of 2015

Stonewall has published its Top 100 Employers 2015, showcasing Britain’s best employers for lesbian, gay and bisexual staff.

The top 100 list is based on the results of Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index 2015, the eleventh published by the charity. The Index is based on a range of key indicators which include a confidential questionnaire of LGB staff, with over 9,700 participants.

This consistently revealed that employees from organisations ranked in Stonewall’s Top 100 exhibited higher levels of staff satisfaction and loyalty.

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust was named as 2015’s top gay-friendly employer; in second place is Tower Hamlets Homes and Lloyds Banking Group is third.

On the fifteenth anniversary of the repeal of the ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual people serving in the military all three of the armed forces appear on the list for the first time and MI5 takes seventh place.

Pride UK at American Express wins the award for Network Group of the Year. Alison Lowe, Touchstone’s Chief Executive is named Senior Champion of the Year. Tamoor Ali, Senior Commercial Analyst at BP is Role Model of the Year.

Ally of the Year is awarded to EDF Energy’s Chief Nuclear Officer Mark Gorry.

Accenture, Barclays, BP, Citi, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith Freehills, HSBC, IBM, RBS and the Royal Air Force are named as Top Global Employers, based on their support for their lesbian, gay and bisexual staff worldwide.

Ruth Hunt, Stonewall Chief Executive said:

“Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust and every employer featured in the 2015 Top 100 have performed remarkably. Not only was this the most competitive year to date, we’re delighted to see that in just fifteen years our armed forces are making real progress in supporting and developing their lesbian, gay and bisexual staff.”

Ruth Hunt

Full results of the Stonewall Top Employers 2015: The Workplace Equality Index are available now on Stonewall’s website – www.stonewall.org.uk/WEI2015

‘Lesbians Who Tech’ Wants to Connect Queer Geeks, Get More Women in Tech

The statistics on women in the technology industry are astounding. As of 2013 women made up just 26% of the computing workforce with most of the women in the industry being white women (16%) and half of that (8%) being women of colour.

According to a study by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) making teams more diverse is vital to their success. Their results concluded that diverse teams not only have better performance but the morale of the team and the quality of the end product are both improved because of it.

Yet with such small figures of women being involved in the tech sector, something needs to be done. Consider Lesbians Who Tech one of the driving forces then as they want to make a more inclusive and more diverse space for queer women in the technology industry.

Lesbians Who Tech was founded in December 2012 by Leanne Pittsford. LWT wants to increase the following: the numbers of queer women in technology, the visibility of queer women in tech (including visibility outside of the queer female community) and to connect queer women in tech to platforms concerning social good and activism specifically.

While its goals should garner much support, Lesbians Who Tech are certainly up against it but their action plan to achieve these things could just work. In February/March 2014 Lesbians Who Tech hosted its very first summit in San Francisco where over 800 women (and queer allies) attended panels to not just learn about inequality in the tech industry but to look at how to tackle it.

For example, one point brought up was the humungous wage gap that women in technology face. In Silicon Valley (the tech hub of the United States), women make just 49 cents to every dollar a man makes which is literally paying men over twice the amount of money for doing the exact same work. This is even more egregious that the United States’ general wage page of women earning 81 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

That’s unacceptable and arguably by talking about this more, increasing the numbers of women in the field and calling for something to change, something will change and the tech industry will become a more diverse (and less sexist) place because of it.

You can find out more about Lesbians Who Tech and about upcoming summits at the source link below.

Source: Lesbians Who Tech

Know Your Employment Rights: Julia’s Story

In light of the story we ran on Monday, we felt it was important to provide people with some further information on employment rights within the United Staes.

Founded in 1973, Lambda Legal is the oldest and largest national legal organization whose mission is to achieve full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV; through impact litigation, education and public policy work.

For more than three decades, workplace equality has been a top priority for Lambda Legal.

“Workplace concerns remain the number one topic for our Legal Help Desk calls. While a growing number of employers and state and local governments have enacted policies and laws to address discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and HIV status, we have no federal statute banning discrimination, and almost half of all LGBT workers go to work every day without explicit state-level sexual orientation and gender identity anti-discrimination laws.”

Please take a closer look at their website, the information their is so useful – Know Your Rights

http://vimeo.com/111432865