Post by OmegaPost by RJHIs it legal to specify that only local people can apply for a job - a home
repairs apprentice for example?
The area in question is, say, deprived, with high levels of unemployment.
Why on earth would any employer want to dilute his ability to recruit
the 'best man for the job' by adding restriction or not, as to where his
potential workforce live?
When it's not really a job, it's a social project dressed up as a job.
Now, that's a slightly cynical statement, and I do need to qualify it by
adding that I don't object to social projects dressed up as jobs. In my
town, there's an absolutely wonderful organisation which exists to provide
meangful purpose for people who would otherwise be unemployable due to a
range of mental disabilities. The work their people do is real work (you
can, for example, hire the organisation to deliver leaflets, or provide
outside event catering), but it is, nonetheless, primarily for the sake of
giving them something meaningful to do rather than employing them in a fully
commercial capacity (the organisation is a not-for-profit and relies on
fundraising as well as their commercial income from the services they
provide for hire). They are deliberately "recruiting" those who are *not*
"the best person for the job", they are recruiting people who will never be
the best person for the job.
In the same way, I think it's perfectly acceptable to have a social project
aimed at mitigating the effects of unemployment in a particular demographic
by providing meaningful work for those people even if they are not
necessarily the "best person for the job" in a normal commmercial sense.
And, if so, it's equally accceptable to discriminate in favour of those
people (eg, by restricting employment opportunities to those who live in a
particular location, if that's a part of the relevant demographic), provided
it doesn't reduce the availablity of normal, commmercially competitive job
vacancies. People who actually are the best person for the job won't be
needing this particular leg-up, they'll already have found (or will be able
to find) employment with a different employer.
Mark