What the law calls discrimination
Discrimination is not a feeling of unfairness. It is unfavourable treatment, based on one of the twenty-five grounds protected by law, in a comparable situation. Three elements: the treatment, the ground, the comparison.
That structure is what makes a situation demonstrable — or not. Lack of recognition, an excessive workload, brutal management may all be wrongful without being discriminatory. Conversely, a decision perfectly justified on paper may be discriminatory once the comparison is made.
The burden of proof is shared
The person concerned presents facts suggesting discrimination. It is then for the employer to prove that the decision rests on objective grounds unrelated to any discrimination.
A practical consequence, often underestimated: an organisation that does not document its decisions — promotions, pay rises, assignments — deprives itself of its own defence. A case file is not built at the time of the dispute. It is built before.
Why most situations settle without a judge
Of the two thousand or so remediations we have led, close to 90% reached an outcome without the remediator approaching the person implicated directly. A written legal reading, shared without accusation, is usually enough to move the situation.
Litigation costs three to five years, exposes the organisation and rarely leaves the working relationship intact. This is not giving up on the law: it is the law used earlier.
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“A situation legally qualified within the first fifteen days almost always settles. After six months, it becomes litigation.”
The first fifteen days of a report
