HOMOPHOBIA

Under British law it would seem that lesbians and gay men have no protection from discrimination in law. There is no law against discrimination on the grounds of sexuality in employment. Employers can lawfully refuse to hire a lesbian or a gay man because of their sexuality, or refuse to promote them, or even dismiss them simply because of their sexuality. A claim for unfair dismissal can only be taken by an employee who has been with their employer for at least two years, and even then a claim for unfair dismissal on the ground of sexuality will not necessarily succeed.

Employers are under no obligation to give lesbians and gay men the same pay and conditions as other employees. Many lesbians and gay men lose out on fringe benefits because their employer will not recognise their partner, for example in health insurance, pension schemes, or cheap or free use of the employer's services. Employers are perfectly entitled under British law to reject a job applicant simply because they are lesbian or gay. By contrast employers are not allowed to refuse to employ someone simply because of their sex, race, disability or their religion.

A lesbian or a gay man who is dismissed because of their sexuality has no redress unless they have been with that employer for two years. Only then can they claim for unfair dismissal. Even then they have no guarantee of succeeding, because the Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that employers may dismiss gay people on the grounds of potential client prejudice even if that prejudice has no basis in reality. A recent case is outlined below.

"......About 7 weeks ago my partner started working for a security company who placed her in a convenience store in a suburb of Derby and, noticing they had vacancies for store staff, asked the store manager for an application form for me. That night she phoned me from work and asked if I could call in for an interview. I went in, filled in an application form, and actually started that night. As we are wary of letting people know our sexuality, we started off by saying we were just flat mates but after telling someone in the store, soon everyone knew. Today as usual we started getting ready for work when my partner noticed she had a missed call from her boss asking her to call him back as soon as possible as it was important. She did so and was shocked when he sacked her.

The reason her boss gave was that the area manager of the store had been lookin at the CCTV and observed that we had been up to 'funny business' and that she didn't want her anywhere near the store again. I then called my boss to ask why my partner had been sacked. He said he couldn't talk about it over the phone and asked me to call into the store, which I did, and I was sacked too. The reason he gave me for this was 'till discrepancies'. I know, and all the store know for a fact that almost every till is up or down a few pence, and my till has never been wrong by a large amount. I was a supervisor with the store and a few nights ago, after closing, I took one staff members' till off as usual, so I could cash it up, and her till was down by £10. This is a big difference to a few pence, but she still works for the company.

For us both to be sacked on the same day for different reasons when we are both hard workers with, until today, good reports from the store, and for my girlfriend to be sacked for hugging me as I was upset at the time, I believe both the area manager and the store manager behaved in a homophobic manner towards us both. For them to behave like this towards us and to basically treat me like a thief has most probably ruined our chances of finding a decent job in the near future and we totally deny these allegations. We will be taking the matter further as we would both like to know the real reason why we were dismissed and want to make it known how a huge company, actually owned by one of the big four supermarkets, treats its staff......"

The position outlined above may seem bleak, but recent decisions by the European Court of Justice suggest that sexuality discrimination is already unlawful under European law.