Discrimination in the Workplace (Australia)

1038 Words5 Pages
a) Define Discrimination: Workplace discrimination is the discrimination or favoring/disfavoring against a certain person due to their race, sex, disability, age, religion or sexuality as opposed to qualifications and experience when hiring, promoting, terminating, distributing wages and providing compensation to. Workplace discrimination is illegal and is covered in Australia through a number of acts including the NSW Anti Discrimination Act 1977, the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and Sex Discrimination Act 1975. Workplace discrimination can occur deliberately or unintentionally. Religion Workplace discrimination can take form due to prejudice or bias towards a certain religion. Employers may hold beliefs that one religious denomination is better at doing one job or is more hardworking. It can either by the valuing or treating a person differently due to their religious beliefs. This can favor or disfavor them. This may relate to situations where employers favor employees or potential employees of their religion, they may choose not to hire or disfavor employees of other religious denominations. It may also relate to some stereotypes employers may associate with certain religions. This type of discrimination and bias is illegal and is covered by in the Anti Discrimination Act 1977 and Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986. Age Age discrimination can take place in the workplace due to the stereotyping of people from a certain age group. An employer may hold a set of beliefs and attitudes against a certain cohort, causing them to be favored or disfavored. Practical factors such as pay and working hours can also attribute to age discrimination. People of every age may be prone to discrimination in the office however this is illegal and covered by in the Age Discrimination Act 2004. Younger candidates may be favored in terms of pay as
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