Equality and Diversity Course

Equality & Diversity Course March 2018

I attended this course because I wanted to increase my knowledge in this very important area and fulfil my obligation to the Leicester and Leicestershire Unite the Union Retired Members Branch where I serve as Equalities Officer for the branch.

The above course was run from the Union’s Derby offices during the period 12-16th March.

The course was led by Michelle Carey and there were 7 delegates including self, we were split in to tables of 4&3. The aims of the course were spelled out by the leader, we were given folders to read and encouraged to work together on some of the activities and singly on others and feedback was encouraged.

The first activity of the day was for members of each table to find out about others by a “round robin” approach, find their names, roles in the union, about their workplace and the job they did. Becoming aware of the aims of the course for personal use and dealing with the one key equality issue relevant to your workplace was also identified.

Once this was done we had to speak about what we learnt about one another!

We then moved onto the next activity which covered Harassment and Discrimination and saw a video called “A class divided” which was thought inspiring and led to a good debate at the close. We also had to fill in activity sheets for each one and these would then be handed back for checking by Michelle. Further activities on Equality followed together with duties of Equality representatives and included the Unions rules on this mater.

A hand out on Union Democracy & Management was also circulated to make us more aware of how it is organised in terms of layers of responsibilities. Focus on Rule 2.1.6 was made which dealt with “Promotion of Equality and fairness for all, actively opposing prejudice and discrimination on grounds of gender, race, ethnic origin, religion, class, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, ag, disability, or caring responsibilities”.

Activity 6 dealt with Defining Key Terminology and the 9 equality strands, attention was made to those wearing religious items to denote their religious beliefs and they must not be discriminated against, these include Crosses, head dresses, Skullcaps and Turbans.

Inappropriate and Disrespectful language was also covered and effects on others noted and types of action taken against them discussed.

The Role of the Human Rights Commission was discussed at length and activity and feedback from delegates given, Information for this exercise was gained from Laptop and Tablets as needed to search Internet for it, previous experience of this type helped! Examples of how this works via the Workfit programme was raised by me as seen it in action via the IST promotion at the conference in September 2017.

Types of discrimination were discussed in Activity 10 while Understanding disabilities was covered in Activity 11 and this included those that were deemed to be Life threatening like Cancers, HIV & Multiple Sclerosis.

Disability discrimination and case studies were then debated and noted.

On Thursday we moved on to Family Friendly Rights and Dean and I worked on Shared Parental Leave and looked at various aspects of it in terms of eligibility and terms, all the information was then transferred onto a flipchart and posted on the wall for further presentation to the group.

We then moved onto Homophobia and Transphobia and raised a point during debate on that was not aware of anything like that happening at place of former workplace and gave a caveat that it could be occurring but not being reported for fear of reprisals.

Workplace equal opportunities were also covered with cases being debated before moving onto H&S issues relating to be disabilities and how they maybe tackled along with cases covered, Workplace grievances were also covered on Friday morning.

We also did a further flip chart presentation on a workplace issue, this is one that Dean came across and warranted attention, it was on Workplace Bullying and why Unite is so much against it!

To finish off before lunch, a quiz on workplace issues and equalities took place, answers were provided and did well.

By 1pm we were done and dusted and on way home.

At some point in near future we shall receive certification from a Birmingham College that we

attended the course and our responses to the various activities have been logged and details despatched to it for validation.

Also, during the course, we met the Regional Advisor on Equalities and advised that she will help us with any issues. Also, worth pointing out that we were looked after, fed and given refreshments in a very nice ambient atmosphere.

Andy Kowalski

Equalities Officer

27th March 2018