Dying on the job - Racism and risk at work

In order to identify effective solutions to the issues highlighted in this report, it is crucial we centre the voices of those workers who experience racism at work on a daily basis. We therefore asked all those who responded to our online survey what changes they would like to see made to tackle the discrimination that they faced.

Some of those that responded were understandably pessimistic about the possibility of changing the entrenched inequality in their workplaces. A number of respondents felt that the only route open to them was to leave their current role, as one IT worker noted:

Others highlighted action that needed to be taken immediately, with the issues most frequently raised including access to PPE for all workers, thorough health and safety risk assessments which properly took into account the increased risks to BME people, and greater protection for those raising complaints.

The need for broader action to change things in the longer term was also frequently raised as a preferred solution. Respondents called for strengthened legislation and real commitment from government and employers to tackle entrenched systemic discrimination. The lack of BME staff at senior levels was repeatedly highlighted as evidence of the need for change.

Current systems of tackling racism were widely seen as ineffective. Respondents called for effective training to be prioritised, particularly for managers.

In developing our recommendations, we have taken into account the views expressed by the BME workers who responded to our call for evidence. Below we set out our recommendations for how structural and institutional racism in UK workplaces should be addressed.

Government should take immediate action to:

• create and publish a cross-departmental action plan, with clear targets and a timetable for delivery, setting out the steps that it will take to tackle the entrenched disadvantage and discrimination faced by BME people; in order to ensure appropriate transparency and scrutiny of delivery against these targets regular updates should be published and reported to parliament
• strengthen the role of the Race Disparity Unit to properly equip it to support delivery of the action plan
• introduce mandatory ethnicity pay-gap reporting alongside a requirement for employers to publish action plans covering recruitment, retention, promotion, pay and grading, access to training, performance management and discipline and grievance procedures relating to BME staff and applicants
• introduce a ban on zero-hours contracts, a decent floor of rights for all workers and the return of protection against unfair dismissal to millions of working people
• demonstrate transparency in how it has complied with its public sector equality duty through publishing all equality impact assessments related to its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
• Allocate EHRC additional, ringfenced resources so that they can effectively use their unique powers as equality regulator to identify and tackle breaches of the Equality Act in relation to the impact of Covid-19 on BME workers.

Employers should:

• undertake proper job-related risk assessments to ensure that BME workers are not disproportionately exposed to coronavirus and take action to reduce the risks, through the provision of PPE and other appropriate measures where exposure cannot be avoided
• establish an ethnic monitoring system that as a minimum covers recruitment, promotion, access to training, performance management and disciplinary and dismissal, and then evaluate and publish this monitoring data alongside an action plan to tackle any areas of disproportionate under or overrepresentation identified.
• undertake a workplace race equality audit to identify institutional racism and structural inequality
• work with trade unions and workforce representatives to establish targets and develop positive action measures to address racial inequalities in the workforce.

As representatives of workers, trade unions also need to take action to ensure that BME workers are able to raise issues of race discrimination in the workplace and to increase BME workers’ confidence that they will be supported in their struggles for fair treatment at work.

Unions need to:

• ensure BME workers are represented at all levels in union structures and on the main decision-making bodies of their organisations
• consult BME workers about their work, to improve their confidence in unions’ abilities to represent them
• ensure BME workers’ cases are speedily assessed, and concerns addressed
• take account of the race equality aspects of collective bargaining
• discuss with BME workers the bargaining issues that are relevant to their workplace experiences and set out how the mainstream negotiating agenda impacts on BME people’s working lives.