Workplace benefits


The law requires that packages of benefits offered to their workers by employers must not discriminate on grounds of any of the protected characteristics (see pages 17-20). Such things as travel concessions, health care packages, free or subsidised membership of particular facilities (etc) must be offered without discrimination to civil partners, where they are offered to spouses. Where, in addition, they are offered to unmarried heterosexual workers’ partners, they need to be offered to same-sex partners not registered as civil partners.


In workplaces where benefits are limited to spouses and civil partners, unions will want to ensure that in the name of fairness the same benefits are extended to unmarried heterosexual and same-sex partners too.