Discrimination usually consists of one or more of the following:

1. People who are treated differently based upon their sex, race, colour, and nationality, ethnic or national origins or married status. This also covers sexual harassment.

2. Employees are paid different rates of pay despite doing similar work, because of their sex.

3. Disabled people who receive less favourable treatment than their work colleagues who are not disabled.

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 says that an employer should not discriminate against a person on the grounds of their disability. To prevent discrimination an employer will be expected to make adjustments to the workplace and working conditions. So that a disabled person is not placed at a "substantial disadvantage".

The Act describes a disabled person as anyone who has a "physical or mental impairment", which is long-term or substantial and makes them unable to carry out normal day to day activities.

This is a very wide definition and could include new categories of disability. Employers will have to be careful that their recruitment, training and dismissal procedures, etc. do not treat disabled people unfairly.

Members of trade unions who are treated less favourably than non-union members. However, this can also work in reverse, if non-union workers receive less favourable treatment.

There is no compensation available for people who are discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, (for example gay men or lesbians), because this is not recognised as sex discrimination.

There are two basic forms of discrimination, direct and in-direct.

Direct discrimination is when an employee or prospective employee is less favourably treated because of their race or sex.

This tends to be obvious discrimination, for example, a female candidate with the best qualifications and experience does not get an interview.

Or, if she is already in a job, she is ignored for promotion, the job going to a less qualified male worker.

An employer cannot argue that it was not their intention to discriminate, the law only considers the end effect.

In-direct discrimination is a more complicated form of discrimination.

An Employment Tribunal will look at 3 factors.

1. The amount of people from a racial group or of one sex that can meet the job criteria is considerably smaller than the rest of the population.

2. The criteria cannot actually be justified by the employer as a real requirement of the job. So a candidate who cannot meet the criteria could still do the job as well as anyone else.

3. Because the person cannot comply with these criteria they have actually suffered in some way because of it. This seems obvious, but a person cannot complain unless they have lost out in some way.

With Indirect Discrimination an employer can argue that there may be discrimination, but that it is actually required for the job.

This does not happen very often, but circumstances where it might occur are, for example, actors who are needed to play certain characters for authenticity. The same can be true for restaurants, for example an Indian restaurant will want Indian staff rather than white staff.

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