Councils, Catholics and discrimination - Scotland's shame continues to poison the well of equality

We already know, from research published last year into the employment equality record of Scotland's NHS Boards and Universities, that equality of access to work and all that it brings remains as elusive for Catholics as does the presence of integrity in the Westminster government's oxymoron that is welfare 'reforms'.

Last year's research showed that nearly 13,000 Catholics are missing from the NHS and University payrolls across Scotland.  'Missing' in the sense that institutional discrimination and sectarianism in the NHS and in Universities keeps them from getting on the payroll in the first place.  No other coherent explanation can justify the sheer scale of the 21st century's version of the sans-culottes that are Scotland's Catholics in the workplace.

No other coherent explanation can justify
the sheer scale of the 21st century's version
of the sans-culottes that are Scotland's
Catholics in the workplace

More recent research shows that local authorities in Scotland offer just as little in terms of equality of employment opportunity to Catholics.  Over 28,300 Catholics are 'missing' from the payrolls of Scotland's councils.  Alongside this staggering addition to Scotland's sans-culottes, we also know that Scotland's councils are complicit in a widespread cover-up of their shameful record on employment equality for Catholics. 

22 of Scotland's 32 councils are failing to routinely gather and publish data on the religious identity of their workers.  As well as being a basic failure to comply with the specific equality duties, it is nothing less than a brazen attempt to keep evidence of discrimination from public scrutiny and accountability.

All of this does beg the question that if Scotland's shame, sectarianism, can sustain the exclusion of Catholics from the public sector workplace to such an extent, in what other areas of life are the same unlawful exclusions built into how the system works ?  What other wells of equality have been and remain poisoned to the Catholics of Scotland ?

If you are shocked by this and want to bring pressure to bear on politicians who must carry responsibility for this deliberate exclusion of Catholic people, there are a number of simple things you can do.  Share the research report with your friends and colleagues.  Giving oxygen to the sheer scale of this exclusion of Catholic people is vital if we are to secure real equality of opportunity.

If you need a sense of the scale of the Catholics 'missing' from council payrolls, picture this.  If all the Catholics excluded from the payrolls of Scotland’s local authorities were to form a queue to speak to their MSP in Scotland’s parliament about the sectarian discrimination in council employment, that queue for equality of employment opportunity would reach just over 17 miles and take us all the way from Holyrood out to Lennoxlove House with its historic links to Mary Queen of Scots.

Ask your councillor what she or he thinks of the performance of your council and what action they will take to employ more Catholic people over the next 5 years.

Ask your MSP what she or he knows about the performance of councils and what they will do to do to eliminate the sectarian discrimination which clearly exists.

And finally, but no less importantly, John Swinney is the Scottish government minister with responsibility for local government.  Get on his case and demand real action leading to real change and real equality of employment opportunity for Catholic people.

You can email John Swinney with your demands using this link.

You can also tweet him via Twitter, demanding that he and Scottish government take real and immediate action, and end the workplace sectarianism which costs Catholic people equality of employment opportunity.  
Tweet to @JohnSwinney