Hello to all our members
A couple of weeks have now passed since the legislation was approved by the States and I wanted to offer you the CGi committee’s perspective. I would like to thank all of you who fed back to the committee their thoughts and suggestions prior to the States debate and we at the CGi hope we represented that feedback well.
For those who followed the news, there was lively debate in the media, on social media and in the Assembly itself before the law was eventually passed.
The CGi has never had an issue with an anti-discrimination law per se, provided it is proportionate to the Island. We therefore battled hard publicly and privately and challenged the States on several issues, specifically:
– We asked for evidence of a problem with discrimination locally
– We asked for an impact analysis from the States, given it is the largest employer
– We requested confirmation of the actual costs of implementing the legislation.
We have never received an adequate response to any of these questions.
The CGi also requested for some of the administrative burden of the law to be reduced for firms under 10 employees – supporting the amendment by Deputies Blin, de Lisle and Dyke – which was ultimately defeated.
I had direct contact and discussions with 10 Deputies, we wrote to Deputy Roffey on more than one occasion, issued press releases, fielded interviews on local media and met with other stakeholders promoting the legislation, including the Guernsey Disability Alliance and Guernsey Employment Trust.
We did this to ensure that our membership’s viewpoint was represented and to hold our Deputies accountable.
We will, though, be working with members to help them with the legislation as the first part is to be introduced in September 2023, so we will be in touch with details in due course. If any of you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact us and we will endeavour to answer your queries.
Thanks and best
Dave Newman
Chairman CGi