WMCA Industrial Strategy Consultation

TUC Priorities

Tackle discrimination and other barriers that prevent all communities from accessing great jobs, skills, equal pay and progression. Harness the benefits that diverse communities bring to local economies to support inclusive economic growth. Boost productivity and high performances businesses, by ensuring all workplaces support good health and well-being and are free from harassment and bullying.

Issues and evidence

There are significant differences of outcome in relation to recruitment, retention, progression, pay and access to skills across all protected equalities groups.

Too many deprived communities across the region have suffered from poor job and life opportunities. A key goal for the WMCA should be in working to deliver innovative programmes and provide access to decent jobs and training to tackle entrenched deprivation.

This is not only an injustice to those groups of workers but it has a negative impact on the local economy, hampering productivity, preventing businesses from accessing the widest possible talent pool and suppressing income and aggregate demand.

This can be a result of discrimination but also structural barriers arising from a wide range of factors in the workplace and wider society, including lack of accessible spaces, inflexible working patterns, lack of social infrastructure such as childcare facilities and support for vulnerable groups and a failure to connect disadvantaged communities with areas of employment opportunity.

The WMCA should promote greater equality and diversity through all parts of the economy, working with community organisations, unions and employers to identify and address the barriers that some communities face.

Recommendations

The WMCA and local authorities can help tackle some of the barriers to employment, fair pay and progression by (a) ensuring all their employment and commissioning practice is in line with the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty and (b) use commissioning and procurement powers to ensure businesses in the region adhere to the principles of the duty and provide employment and training opportunities to disadvantaged groups of workers.

The WMCA and LEPs should work together to map inequalities in employment, skills, pay and progression outcomes across the local economy, working with employers, unions and community organisations to identify structural barriers and devise and implement plans to overcome them.

This could include:

• working with employers and unions to provide information, advice and guidance for all employers, particularly SMEs, and workers to understand better the benefits of diversity to the local economy and the means available to tackle discrimination and structural barriers
• investing in and support social infrastructure that enables disadvantaged groups from entering the labour market, including childcare and support for victims of domestic violence
• working with employers and unions to (a) addressing barriers to high-pay, highproductivity jobs through addressing training, labour supply, recruitment and retention and (b) address poor employment practice in those sectors of the economy where disadvantage groups are over-represented in employment
• promote greater reporting of gender, BAME and disability pay gaps in businesses and organisations

The WMCA and LEPs should provide effective outreach and capacity building to ensure that all communities, particularly under-represented groups, are able to access information, meaningfully feedback and inform the local industrial strategy.