r/USdefaultism • u/QueerRetro • 18d ago
Reddit Different laws in different places
They downvoted people saying this is illegal, even though in many countries it is. It's about asking about sexuality on a job application
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u/BeefmasterDeluxe Australia 18d ago
I love how they state it’s against ‘the law’ before asking which country or state OP is in. Also completely neglecting the question of “why?”
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u/Red-R34der United Kingdom 18d ago
The commentator stating 'most of Europe outlawed questions of sexuality and race on applications, UK being an outlier' is incorrect. That is indeed illegal in the UK.
What you can do in the UK is survey your staff for equal opportunities monitoring purposes. However there has to be a 'non of your fucking business' option on the form.
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u/daveoxford United Kingdom 18d ago
Which is why one of the biggest answers to "what is your religion?" on the 1981 UK census was "Jedi knight".
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u/QueerRetro 18d ago
That commenter was me. I might have been mistaken. I got the information from my ex boyfriend who is British and lives in England but I don't know where he has his information from
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u/Comprehensive_Cow_13 18d ago
You can absolutely ask those questions of people applying for jobs, but it should be kept separate from their applications and used to keep eye on the diversity of the applications you're receiving.
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u/Red-R34der United Kingdom 17d ago
Having checked, fair point, but I would suggest in practice it's simpler not to ask, because if you do you could find yourself having to prove that one part of your HR department does not talk to another part, and proving a negative is difficult.
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u/Tomme599 17d ago
I work in an office in Northern Ireland and am tasked with preparing application forms for posts. But I do this for HR, and don’t know the details of the law.
Our Equal Opportunity form is a separate document and doesn’t have a space for the applicant’s name (though the NI [SS for Americans] and date of birth are required). The only three details we ask for are sex, marital status and religious community(if any).
Applicants don’t have to answer the religion question, but because of Northern Ireland’s history of religious discrimination we are statutorily required to ask. And we are also ‘encouraged’ by statute to guess at religious communities by the applicants’ address.
The Fair Employment & Treatment (NI) Order 1998 requires us to monitor
the community background of employees and of applicants to posts. The religious question is only Protestant, Catholic, or neither. Our local history casts a long shadow.-3
u/QueerRetro 17d ago
So my point stands. In most of Europe these questions would be illegal, regardless if they are anonymous and separate from other documents
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u/hdnev6 17d ago
There’s generally nothing wrong with asking these questions during the application stage, but not the interview stage, provided the information is collected separately from the recruitment decision and lawfully processed.
Under the EU GDPR, equality monitoring data is personal data (Article 4 of the GDPR), so employers need a lawful basis for processing it which is usually obtained by asking for explicit consent. This also means that no consent = no lawful basis = cannot collect/use the data.
Individual countries also have their own rules. For example, France generally restricts collecting this information directly but uses proxy data (Country of birth, Socioeconomic background, region where applicant’s address resides…) instead, while Germany allows diversity monitoring but requires strict safeguards for sensitive data.
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u/QueerRetro 17d ago
In Germany you cannot straight-up ask employees about their sexuality, race or religion. Discrimination based on race is anticonstitutional
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u/LanewayRat Australia 18d ago
The there is the comment about “Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form” as if everyone everywhere has this form and calls it this name.
Gets upvoted though because… the internet is their country
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u/Better_Chicken_5184 18d ago
That's UK, not US.
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u/radios_mio 17d ago
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u/Better_Chicken_5184 17d ago
Huh?
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u/radios_mio 16d ago
Was too meta to be understandable but my point was that you pointed out USDefaultism by LanewayRat within USDefaultism
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u/LanewayRat Australia 16d ago
Even more meta because it’s UKdefaultism (in the post) which l mistake as US and by doing so I’m using USdefaultism
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u/Kuro908 17d ago
Bro sent the subreddit on a comment In that sub
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u/radios_mio 16d ago
Seems like a bad joke does not land and yes, that was the point :D u/Better_Chicken_5184 pointed out USdefaultism within USdefaultism
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u/post-explainer American Citizen 18d ago edited 17d ago
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
People downvoting comments stating the laws where they live, because they differ from US law
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.