Yesterday’s Sunday Times
Yesterday.
The Sunday Times reported that The Irish Times was censured by the Workplace Relations Commission after it was found to have discriminated against a female sub-editor by cutting her shift rate after she returned from maternity leave.
The newspaper was ordered to pay her a total of €9,000 – €6,500 in wages and €2,500 compensation for the personal distress and anxiety caused.
The judgment can be read in full here.
Further to this…
Anon writes:
It’s interesting to note The Irish Times’ approach to regularly reporting cases of discrimination from the Workplace Relations Commission and the Equality Tribunal, as well as their constant commentary on this form of discrimination.
See here and here for examples of such reporting.
On December, 5th, 2016, seven days before the Workplace Relations Commission ruled that The Irish Times had discriminated against a new mother, The Irish Times ran an editorial with the headline: ‘We need an all-Ireland campaign to promote equality for working mother’ in which it said:
While tougher laws may play a role, real progress in equality for pregnant women will only come through targeted efforts to change the workplace culture and a real shift in the societal expectation of working parents. We should start with an all-island campaign promoting equality for working mothers and pregnant women.
In addition, so appalled by discrimination against working mothers, The Irish Times is very fond of promoting NGO research and case studies that show how pregnant women continuously face discrimination in the workplace:
From November 29, 2016, in an article headlined “Half of women in North say careers damaged after pregnancy”, it stated:
More than a third of women in Northern Ireland said they were treated unfairly or disadvantaged due to pregnancy or taking maternity leave, according to a survey carried out by the North’s Equality Commission.
From August 14, 2015, in an article headlined “Pregnant and working? You may still face discrimination”, it stated:
A recent comprehensive study has found, however, that both pregnancy and maternity are also times when women can face increased discrimination in the workplace.
The study of more than 3,200 women, which was conducted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the UK, found that 11 per cent of the women interviewed reported having been dismissed, made compulsorily redundant where others were not, or treated so poorly that they felt they had little choice but to leave their jobs.
The survey’s authors suggest that if replicated across the whole of the population, it could mean that up to 54,000 women may be forced out of the workplace in Britain each year.
From December 2, 2014, in an article headlined “Pregnancy is a full-time job for working women”, it stated:
Up to 30 per cent of women feel they have been treated unfairly during pregnancy, according to a national survey of pregnancy at work published in 2011 by the HSE Crisis Pregnancy Programme and the Equality Authority.
At its most extreme, this involved dismissal, which 5 per cent of women reported. Others felt they had lost out on salary, bonuses or promotion, had endured unpleasant comments from managers and/or co-workers, or had been discouraged from exercising their right to attend antenatal appointments during work time.
And so to the obvious question.
Given The Irish Times’ pronounced and indisputable consternation over the amount of discrimination new and expectant mothers face in the workplace, has the paper of record reported the judgement from the case that involves themselves?
Of course not.
Irish Times cut new mothers’ pay (Sunday Times)
According to Sebastien the IT has been on a downward trajectory since the death of RMS.
…an exceptional piece of research there Anon…have you considered going into journalism…
The IT is not a real newspaper. Pathetic sad failure.
A serious question. Does Broadsheet (and its commentariat) believe that the Irish media landscape will be better off without the Irish Times?
We know they’re circling the drain financially. We also know that Broadsheet never misses an opportunity to take a shot either. And yet. A non-Redacted-owned news source with investigative journalistic pedigree in our current alt-facts world, you would think, would be worth keeping. For all its perceived faults and inherent bias.
The left likes to moan that the IT is stodgily conservative while the right (well, the religious right) have always moaned about the right-on liberal agenda IT. So they must be doing at least something right.
So, this is a re-run of yoru bizarre stance of ‘I’m not pro-Trump, just anti pedo-ring murdering email-using Hilary Clinton’, then? Big bad Irish Times, with nothing useful to replace it?
I want them to be better, not gone.
I want them better too but this attack is shoddy at best.
We are provided with the following:
a) The IT has lost a single case at the Workplace Relations Commission on a case regarding a new mother. Almost no other info is provided.
b) One example is provided of the IT being supportive of equality of working mothers (an editorial) and a couple of examples of the IT reporting the findings of various studies / pieces of research.
Presumably, the thrust of this is that the IT treat pregnant women very badly & they are screaming hypocrites.
Is this true? Absolutely impossible to tell from the selective and limited info provided.
Seriously BS, you are becoming a rag.
Really? If the info is limited and selective, it’s more than what you’ve provided.
An editorial (the primary source of a newspaper’s position on a given issue) promoting equality for working mums. Six days later a judgement against the same newspaper for discrimination against a working mum. There’s a rather large bang of sanctimonious hypocrisy off that.
But I suppose it’s easier to be a contrarian, cite no evidence and then rant that the evidence provided is not enough to prove the theory that you have concocted… even though it is.
I know nothing about this case but a reasonable interpretation of the facts could be:
Some mid level boss fecked up and reduced someones hours. They went to the WRC and was awarded what is an amount at the very low level of fault.
Senior management became aware, were disappointed at this kind of discrimination and how easily it could happen so published an editorial. About as robust a response as a newspaper has.
Why do people always immediately jump to the worst possible conclusions?
“Why do people always immediately jump to the worst possible conclusions?”
Because The Internet and because it’s quicker than thinking through something
Yep. Poor senior management. How easy it is to get caught discriminating against someone; rule unknowingly as your middle management fight the case the whole way to the WRC; then issue your “response” a week before the adjudicator delivers the verdict in your case.
I’m not sure how I am being a contrarian.
I am simply pointing out that the implied charge of hypocrisy may possibly be true but that Bodger, in his haste to land yet another ‘blow’ on the ‘paper of record’, didn’t bother to prove his case.
It may be, as someone else here suggests, a cock-up by a mid-level manager. It may actually be more about how contract staff are treated. It may be that she wasn’t very good but that IT HR didn’t deal with things sufficiently carefully. I don’t know and neither do we because Bodger hasn’t done any basic journalism despite his willingness to have a go at the IT.
Broadsheet has rightly criticised the Irish Times in the past (they are a long way from perfect) but it is worth bearing in mind that the Irish Times pays people to go to planning meetings, pays for FOI requests, pays for regular columnists etc. Broadsheet is no longer the unknown upstart & should make a little bit more effort when criticisng the media which actually creates much of the content on which it relies.
+1
You do know the media landscape isn’t limited to just the Irish Times and redacted?
“The left likes to moan that the IT is stodgily conservative”
You saw the stuff from Pell and Reville? Would you limit that to “stodgily conservative”?
It pretty much is. What else is there? The Skibbereen Eagle?
Re. Pell/Reville,I’d just call it lazy on the first, and no-big-deal on the second. You could accuse Reville of being old-school in his wording, but the overreaction and knicker-twisting on Twitter was ridiculous. “OMG eugenics!!!11!!”
Well there’s obviously RTE and TV3, but limiting it to papers you have the Business Post and the Examiner, neither of which go to the click-baiting opeds seen in the Times lately.
And the reaction to Reville’s piece wasn’t due to ‘old school wording’ – the whole point of his piece was that ‘foreigners’ are outbreeding the natives who will go extinct.
I like the SBP, but I don’t think it (or ‘de paper’) have enough clout unfortunately.
Reville’s piece was asking the question of what cultural identity is and how that shifts with differing quantities of immigration. Well, that’s how I read it. I can see how it was easy pickings for professional racism-spotters, though.
This was not the most interesting thing in the Sunday Times this weekend, the most interesting thing was the blatant editorialising of Murdoch on Trump, very light touch, soft focus – lionising Theresa May for her appeasement – buy yeah revel in your schadenfreude for the IT instead
This thread badly needs a dose of Jimmy Rusell
Yere confusing Operational output
AKA, how they make their money
With internal HR practices and management policy
Theres no news there to any working mammy in the Private Sector
Its dog eat dog