Systemic racism means that black workers are not having opportunities to move up pay scales, get promoted or work in sectors with high pay rates.
Black workers in Wales do not have a level playing field when it comes to promotion and securing pay increases, according to a campaign launched this week.
The UNISON Year of the Black Worker 2023 campaign aims to draw attention to systemic racism in Wales and find solutions to the problem.
“A black doctor working in Wales may be paid a lot less than other doctors, even if they are doing the same job description,” said Cllr Kebba Manneh, chairman of UNISON National Black Workers across. “Our campaign wants to highlight the racial discrimination faced by black workers in Wales and find measures to mitigate systemic racism in Wales.”
UNISON say that many black Welsh workers were disproportionately affected by covid 19 during the pandemic. In their survey, 67% of respondents said they had experienced racism whilst working in the NHS; 37% said their employer has not conducted a formal risk assessment on the risks they faced as a black worker.
Manneh said that a number of people who responded to the survey said they had been called names because of their race and others had experienced violence. “Our Southeast Asian colleagues who are doctors have been accused of bringing Covid here into this country. They are medical helping people to get better. They didn’t bring it here. People have been physically beaten up. That kind of violence is not acceptable.”
There is also an ethnicity pay gap in Wales, according to Manneh. As of 31 March 2022, the mean basic salary of those staff who describe their ethnicity as ethnic minority was £15,800 less than that of staff who identify their ethnicity as white, according to Equality Report 2021–22 from Audit Wales.
“We have launched this campaign with the TUC for public mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting by employers so that we can report in monetary terms.” Similar to the gender pay gap reporting requirements introduced in 2017, the purpose of ethnicity pay gap report is to increase transparency and encourage employers to take action to address any disparities.
The ‘Windrush’ generation are those who arrived in the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1973. Manneh said, after the Second World War, some of the ‘Windrush’ generation came to Commonwealth to help rebuild the counter.”
“They became train drivers, electricians, and many other professions, but they are not treated well.” In 2018, hundreds of Commonwealth citizens and many of them from the ‘Windrush’ generation, had been wrongly detained, deported and denied legal rights.
“We have to recognize structural racism. When you identify a problem, you have a responsibility to address it or mitigate it. It is essential that employers, policymakers, and society as a whole recognize the importance of this issue and work towards creating a fair and equal workplace for all.”
“There are a lot of ignorance, and when people don’t know, it’s hard for them to have accurate knowledge or empathy for something because they don’t know why something is happening. This is why education is important – the more effort that is made to educate people, the less of this ignorance and disregard there will be,” said Manneh.
