Whistle-blowing: How to take on the homophobes and win

The Equalities Review was set up to move the council to a position of inclusion. One of its methods to achieve this is to provide “an independent person for staff members to talk to, offer an informal and formal complaint process and an anonymous incident reporting mechanism.” Great. But how will the council turn this paper policy into something meaningful? How do we ensure that this policy is robust enough to take on the homophobes and win?

Homophobic workplace bullying is such a critical issue that Greens welcome all moves to recognise how it's happening and what we do to eradicate it. At the core of the issue is that the whistleblowing scheme is genuinely independent and free from employer interference and politically motivated action against it. I imagine that most of you, like me, have at some stage faced discrimination in the workplace. If so, do you know what's happened to others who've reported discrimination? There's Alan Whitehead who left his job on the Palace Pier after reporting homophobic abuse.

He won £10,000 in an employment tribunal. This sort of information should be held up to the council and all employers to remind them that they cannot hide from the law. Recently I've been enraged that a friend of mine (on a council's payroll) has effectively been forced out of work because management refuse to acknowledge homo-phobia. Their case is not alone, but suppose you're a council employee and don't know anything about the law, you're not a member of the council's trade unions or you're too ill or frail to pursue your employer's behaviour? Or as some of us have argued for ages: why are employers still finding excuses not to move when the law instructs them? It's one thing to have a scheme but quite another to let employees familiarise themselves with how it works. Whistle-blowing can be an empowering process to undermine the shabby habits of an employer but cannot be an end in itself.

It alerts us to the problems but then doesn't remedy them. The greatest consideration must lie in what the scheme's full powers will be. If this is a talking shop to avoid the process of employment tribunals or bad media coverage, I cannot advocate it. This scheme needs to have ways to act against the council and to show best practice to the rest of the country. There should be a controlled period of time when the scheme indicates what routes it will follow when discrimination is reported. It's an outrage that the harassment of LGBT people in the workplace is still rife. The TUC conducted a survey in 1999 which showed that 44% of LGBT workers had suffered workplace discrimination.

Greens support all moves to oust homophobia from the workplace and while a whistle-blowing scheme is a good start, we need to ensure that it's also not the end.