Toggle high contrast
Advanced search
Mobile menu

Dying on the job - Racism and risk at work

Report type
Research and reports
Issue date
BME workers’ labour market experiences

The unemployment rate among BME people is significantly higher than it is among white people (6.3 per cent compared to 3.6 per cent). 1 BME graduates with a first degree are also more than twice as likely to be unemployed as white graduates. 2 <

In part, this is because BME people face discrimination when applying for jobs. A 2019 report by the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College found that, despite having the same skills, qualifications and work experience, job applicants from an ethnic minority backgrounds had to send 60 per cent more applications than white British candidates before they received a positive response. 3

Discrimination continues once BME people are in work. There are around 3.9 million BME working people in the UK who are far more likely to be in precarious jobs than white workers.

  • BME workers are more than twice as likely to be on agency contracts than white workers.
  • BME workers more likely to be on zero-hours contracts – one in 24 BME workers are on zero-hours contracts, compared to one in 42 white workers.
  • One in 13 BME workers are in temporary work, compared to one in 19 white workers.4

Many BME workers experience the double impact of underemployment and low pay.

BME working people are twice as likely to report not having enough hours to make ends meet and pay in temporary and zero-hours jobs is typically a third less an hour than for those on permanent contracts. 5 This places many BME workers and their families under significant financial stress and has constrained the choices that these workers have during the pandemic around whether they can afford not to attend work.

The stress and uncertainty created by the unpredictability of insecure work blights the lives of workers in ordinary times. But the Covid-19 pandemic has added a more deadly aspect to this lack of workplace power. Many of those filling key roles such as caring, in retail, warehouses or in food delivery are on insecure contracts. But they are reliant on their employers providing adequate equipment and working environment to enable them to work safely. Their insecure contracts make it harder for them to assert their rights for a safe workplace and appropriate PPE; to take time off for childcare responsibilities as schools have closed; and to shield if they or someone they live with is vulnerable. Their insecurity has increased their vulnerability, with all the risks to health and life that that brings.

The McGregor-Smith Review 6 into race in the workplace found that structural bias stands in the way of BME workers’ progression at work:

In many organisations, the processes in place, from the point of recruitment through to progression to the very top, remain favourable to a select group of individuals.

BME employees are overrepresented in the lowest paid occupations and underrepresented in the highest paid occupations. 7 An ONS study on ethnicity pay gaps showed that, on average, BME employees earn 3.8 per cent less than white employees. 8 This varies by region, rising as high as 21.7 per cent in London. It also masks disparities by ethnicity. Despite these significant ethnicity pay gaps, and the underlying inequality that they reflect, ethnicity pay gap reporting is still not mandatory in the UK. Government consulted around 18 months ago on the introduction of mandatory reporting for employers, 9 with a range of organisations, including the TUC, signalling their strong support for this approach. Despite the consultation’s stated aim of enabling “government and employers to move forward [on ethnicity pay gap reporting] in a consistent and transparent way” government has failed to take any further steps, including not yet publishing a consultation response.

While we still wait for government to ‘move forward’ on mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting, most companies are not voluntarily monitoring and publishing their ethnicity pay gap. Many are not even in a position to do so. A report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that only 36 per cent of employers have monitoring systems in place that would allow them to collect and analyse data to identify if there are differences in pay between different ethnic groups. 10

During the crisis there has rightly been a recognition of the important role that workers that provide essential services to support our communities have played. BME workers are more likely than white workers to be in this key worker group. Forty per cent of BME workers work in key-worker occupations, compared with 35 per cent of white workers. 11

The ONS has released data showing coronavirus-related mortality rates by occupation 12 . The release listed ten occupations as having high male mortality rates. BME men were significantly overrepresented in eight of these occupations. Security guards and taxi drivers were the two occupations with the highest male coronavirus-related mortality rates. Whereas 12 per cent of all men in employment are BME, 28 per cent of men working as security guards and 43 per cent of male taxi drivers are BME 13 .

Shortly before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the TUC conducted research with over 1,200 BME workers to understand their experiences of discrimination and disadvantage in the workplace. The findings show significant numbers of BME workers experiencing discriminatory treatment across a range of areas. They paint a clear picture of BME workers being systematically undermined, excluded and forced out of work.

The chart below shows the percentage of BME workers who report experiencing different kinds of discrimination and disadvantage at work including:

  • 45 per cent who report being given harder or less popular tasks at work
  • 45 per cent who report being unfairly criticised at work
  • 35 per cent who report being given an unfair performance assessment
  • 35 per cent who report being unfairly turned down for a job
  • 24 per cent who report being singled out for redundancy.
Graph: BME experiences
Contents
01
Executive summary
02
Introduction
03
BME workers’ labour market experiences
04
Conclusion
05
Recommendations
Single page view
Download Dying on the job
PDF | 657.10 KB

Related
content
Campaigns
Coronavirus
Coronavirus - protecting workers
The coronavirus pandemic poses huge risks to workers’ health, jobs and livelihoods. Unions stand ready to work with government to do everything we can to protect health, jobs, and livelihoods.
Join a union
Enable Two-Factor Authentication

To access the admin area, you will need to setup two-factor authentication (TFA).

Setup now