영국의 2010년 평등법과 차별적 해고

The United Kingdom’s Equality Act 2010 gives the protection to employees who are discriminated against by providing them with statutory claims. This paper considers theoretical problems of legislation in the area and its history, focusing on the discriminatory dismissal. UK’s modern anti-discrimination law began with the Race Relations Act 1965, followed by the Sex discrimination Act 1975 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The last one was closely modelled on the sex and race discrimination statues, but despite its similarity to earlier legislation, some of the concepts and ideas that it employed were quite different. The Equality Act 2010 is the statutory legislation witch consolidates all these anti-discrimination laws into one statute to provide a coherent, simplified, and comprehensible theoretical structure to discrimination law. There are three main forms of prohibited discrimination: direct, combined, and indirect, and all these forms are connected with 9 protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Discriminatory dismissal is almost bound to be unfair under ERA 1996, but in contrast to most unfair dismissal claims, there are some advantages to employees sacked: no qualifying period is required, on statutory upper limit on compensation, the changes made to the law governing the burden of proof, and a wider category of employed persons.