This article is from page 15 of the 2006-07-18 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
THE YEAR 2005 saw a jump of almost one third in the number of cases taken against employers in the Equality Tribunal.
And with employment equality complaints up by 35 per cent, gender and race are the main grounds for action.
In her report for 2005, the Director of the Equality Tribunal, Melanie Pine, says that last year 1,669 people claimed to the tribunal that they had been discriminated against in relation to work, pensions or access to goods and services. This was a record number of individual claimants, more than 29 per cent higher than the previous peak in 2002 and more than ten times the number of claimants in 2000.
The total number of cases rose from 483 in 2004 to 631, a rise of 31 per cent. Substantial increases were recorded in the percentage of cases claiming discrimination on grounds of gender (66 per cent), race (61 per cent) and disability (71 per cent). However, discrimination on the age grounds fell by 10 per cent.