Discrimination/Victimisation

[Marty McFly]

Work for a company who do maintenance on a large site with a number of different companies. Our company contracts to 2 of the companies, each division having their own staff. Approx 2 years ago we were told that out main contractor wanted all contractors onsite DBS checked, as well as financial checks on each contractor, or we were unable to work on their site. Had no problem with this as long as wasn't just us, even though we had contracted to them for 10-12 years previously. We were told by our 'Manager' either accept it or our employment would be terminated. ( I have the memo to prove this )
Now, 2 years down the line, we are still the only contractors who have had to do this, and even have our company staff from the other division coming on our site/offices who are not DBS checked etc, being given security cards to wander around offices etc.

Could this be classed as discrimination/Victimisation?

[ULA]

Discrimination as set out in the Equality Act 2010 is when someone is treated unfairly for any of these reasons:

• disability
• age
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• race (including colour, nationality, ethnic and national origin)
• pregnancy and maternity
• sex
• sexual orientation
• religion or belief

Unless you were the only person in the company working on that site and you are covered by any of the above "protected characteristics" then I am not sure that what you have set out would be covered as discrimination.

Have you queried this with management / HR?

[Phil_Cee]

Thanks for the reply, yes it has been raised with HR, who have said every contractor on site will be and has to be DBS/Financial checked etc. And still none of them haven't, or have been asked to. We see new sub-contractors on site nearly every week, get to know them and they say they've never been asked for either.

[ULA]

Might be worth going back to HR to state this is not actually happening and requesting a process is put in place to ensure it does happen.

Other than that, you will need to prove the action already taken is covered under the Equality Act definition to raise any form of grievance.