Dying on the job - Racism and risk at work

In June the TUC launched a call for evidence for BME workers to share their experiences of work during Covid-19. More than 1,200 got in touch with the union body.

Of those who contacted the TUC:

• One in five BME workers said they received unfair treatment because of their ethnicity
• Around one in six BME workers felt they had been put more at risk of exposure to coronavirus because of their ethnic background. Many reported being forced to do frontline work that white colleagues had refused to do
• Other respondents said they were denied access to proper personal protective equipment (PPE), refused risk assessments and were singled out to do high-risk work.

Racism at work

Just before the pandemic, a separate ICM poll of BME workers revealed that nearly half (45%) were given harder or less popular work tasks than their white colleagues.

And the poll found that racism was rife in the workplace:

• Just over three in ten (31%) BME workers told the TUC that they had had been bullied or harassed at work.
• A similar percentage (32%) had witnessed racist verbal or physical abuse in the workplace or at a work organised social event.
• Over a third (35%) reported being unfairly turned down for a job Around a quarter (24%) had been singled out for redundancy.
• One in seven (15%) of those that had been harassed said they left their job because of the racist treatment they received.

Previous TUC analysis has found that BME people tend to be paid less than white workers with the same qualifications. And that they are more likely to work in low-paid, undervalued jobs on insecure contracts.

Government must act on institutional and systemic racism

The TUC is calling on the government to:

• Publish an action plan to tackle the inequalities that BME people face, including in work, health, education and justice
• Introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting and make employers publish action plans to ensure fair treatment for BME workers in the workplace
• Ban zero-hours contracts, and strengthen the rights of insecure workers
• Publish all the equality impact assessments related to its response to Covid-19 and be fully transparent about how it considers BME communities in its policy decisions

Download full report (PDF)