How much equality of employment opportunity is there in Scotland's Councils?

One of the clear measures of equality is to be found in the profile, by protected characteristic, of those in employment.

Being in employment can bring multiple, potentially positive, impacts on the lived experiences of many people who share particular protected characteristics.  It can reduce dependence on the less than generous state welfare system and the increasing stigma attached to what little support is provided to people who are jobless for whatever reason.  It provides the opportunities for those previously excluded from key areas of society to be able to influence change and the future shape of societal structures from within.  Being in work instead of being marginalised, excluded and discriminated against can also help start to slowly foster good relations between those who erect barriers and discriminate, and those who are discriminated against.

Scotland’s specific equality duties, adopted in May 2012, recognised this and set a clear goal for public bodies in Scotland.  Amongst other things, the duties required that public bodies gather data on their workforce by protected characteristic and use it to help them better perform their general equality duty to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations.  April 30^th 2013 was the first date by which public bodies were required to publish a report on their efforts in meeting this particular part of the specific equality duties.  Research reports providing data on that baseline are available here.

In July 2015, new research captured data from Scotland's Councils on what had changed in the 2 years since the baseline data was published.  

 In 2013, Councils in Scotland employed 4,826 Catholic people, representing 1.9% of the entire Council workforce.  In 2015, the figure had increased - there are now 9,661 Catholic people employed, representing 3.86% of the Council workforce across Scotland.  Government data resources tell us there are 841,000 Catholic people in Scotland, representing 15.9% of the population.  

The best, and worst, performing Councils when it comes to the employment, or non-employment, of Catholic people can be seen in this table on the right.  One can only guess as to the extent that sectarianism plays in the reality these data sets reveal.  But then Scotland does not like talking about, or even accepting that sectarianism is an issue beyond the football terraces on a Saturday afternoon.

You can read the full research report from which this table is extracted here.

When it comes to the record of Councils in employing disabled people, the good news is equally thin on the ground.  In 2013, the total number of disabled people employed in Councils was 4,819, representing 1.9% of the total number of people employed across all Councils.  By 2015, the number had increased to 4,901, representing 1.96% of the entire workforce.  Government data resources tell us that almost 20% of Scotland's population has a disability.

The best, the worst and the downright ugly Councils when it comes to the employment of disabled people can be seen in the table on the left.

You can read the full research from which this table is extracted here.

There are many in Scotland who believe that we are a 'tolerant' country, and that racism is an English disease.  As with Catholics and sectarianism, there is a lot of denial in Scotland on racism when it comes to employment.  In 2013, Scotland's Councils reported 2,447 Black Minority Ethnic [BME] people employed, making up 0.96% of the entire workforce.  In 2015, this had increased to 2,632 BME people, and making up 1.05% of the entire workforce. Government data reveals that Scotland has over 200,000 people identifying as BME, 4% of the population.  

The great, the good and the awful Councils, when it comes to employment of BME people can be seen in the table on the right.

The full research report, from which this table is an extract, can be found here.

Since the Scottish legislation on same-sex marriage, there are many who believe that Scotland has become some sort of Nirvana for people who identify as lesbian, gay or bi-sexual [LGB].  As with people from the protected characteristics covered already in this blog, the reality as defined by the employment data published by Councils themselves would suggest this is naught but a pipe-dream worthy of Brigadoon 2.  In 2013, Scotland's Councils reported employing 402 people who identified as LGB, representing 0.16% of the entire workforce.  In 2015, Councils reported this had increased, to 906 people identifying as LGB and making up 0.36% of the total Council workforce.  The context for these figures is found on the Stonewalll web pages where they back government estimates that 5-7% of the population is LGB.

The poor, the bad and the awful performing Council when it comes to employment equality for LGB people can be seen in the table on the left.

The full report on LGB employment in Councils, from which this table is an extract, can be found here.

On the basis that these figures suggest there is a serious problem with institutional discrimination in the employment practices and cultures of Scotland's Councils, the reports were sent to the Chief Executive of COSLA, Rory Mair, with the offer of a meeting to consider how performance on equality could be improved and so better serve the interests of people from the protected characteristics covered by the research.  Mr Mair's response was :

"I entirely disagree with your proposition that Scotland’s local authorities’ performance is poor with regard to employment practice"

Does Scotland's NHS have a burning desire for equality ............ for Catholics ?

We may have stopped killing Catholics because they are Catholics and instead confine ourselves to celebrating the death of Catholic who have rebelled against the status quo by burning Guido Fawkes in effigy, but it is not clear that the five centuries since have really changed attitudes towards employing Catholic people in the public sector.

Not too long ago, the Glasgow Herald reported that Tom Devine had claimed that Catholics in Scotland aged below 55 had reached equality in work with other Scots in the 1990s.

In 2013, public bodies published profiling data on their workforce which suggested that things have either changed radically since the 1990s or that the data used then by Devine was less than robust.

In 2013, Scotland's 32 Councils published data which showed that just 1.69% of Scotland's local authority workforce identified as Catholic.  This at a time when the 2011 census was revealing Scotland's Catholics as making up 15.9% of the population.

In the NHS, at 2013 the proportion of people identifying as Catholic and working across the 22 health boards was 7.63%.  Two years later it has crept up to 10.00%.

Scotland's universities in 2013 offered similar dismal evidence of discrimination against Catholics.  Just 0.97% of workers in all universities identified as Catholic.  Edinburgh University, where Tom Devine worked until last year, offered a miserly 1.77% of the workforce as being Catholic.

Since devolution, Scotland's senior public sector apparatchiks have managed to convince themselves sectarianism and discrimination against Catholics is somehow magically confined to the week-ends when some football clubs play each other.  This is the same kind of lazy, arrogant, Wasp-like analysis which informed the work of Visit Scotland in 2013.  

When challenged over the fact that they employed just 1 Catholic out of a workforce of 763 workers, they could not accept there might be sectarianism in their corporate culture.  This was the same organisation which a few years previously were caught out airbrushing in a black face to what was originally an all-white Homecoming poster.

Not only did Visit Scotland fail to accept the potential of sectarianism in their employment culture then, they reported earlier this year that the proportion of Catholics in the workforce has increased, massively, from just 1 in 2013 to 2 in 2015 [see page 39 of the report].  

In carrying out the research for the 2015 report into Catholics and employment in the NHS, it was observed that few if any Boards appear to have systems in place for gathering evidence on patients/service users cross-referenced to their identity by protected characteristic and checking whether their experience of access to, experience in and outcome from health services has been free from discrimination.

A health board delivering services where Catholic people experience barriers, discrimination or sectarianism is unlikely to be an employer where Catholic people find they are free from discrimination, sectarianism or have equality of opportunity – and vice versa

In the same way that it is possible to conclude that the prevailing culture in the NHS on meeting the specific equality duties on employment is one focused on the process rather than on change to the lived experiences of people from the protected characteristics as employees or would-be employees, so too can the absence of joined up work/evidence gathering between NHS Board functions as employers and service providers be regarded as a fundamental and fatal flaw in work to deliver equality.  Such an attitude and approach ignores the ineluctable synergy between the two functions and the cultures of organisations where discrimination exists.  A health board delivering services where Catholic people experience barriers, discrimination or sectarianism is unlikely to be an employer where Catholic people find they are free from discrimination, sectarianism or have equality of opportunity – and vice versa.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is most racist of them all............... in Scotland's NHS ?

Just two years ago, Scotland's 22 Health Boards published their first reports on workforce equality profiling, as required to meet Scotland's then shiny new specific equality duties.

It was not a time for celebration.  No corks were popped for equality in April 2013.  It was hard for the NHS, collectively, to look in the mirror then and see the prejudice and bigotry 

It was hard for the NHS, collectively, to look in the mirror then and see the
prejudice and bigotry which stared back  as the data stacked up

which stared back as the data stacked up, Board by Board, to show that employment equality in the NHS for people sharing protected characteristics is as likely as the KKK is to stop flying the Confederate battle flag.  You can find the research reports which piled up the data sets on the protected characteristics of ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and religion across our NHS in the Equality Here, Now website.

On race, the research in 2013 found that not one of the Boards managed to exceed the standard set by the BBC [then employing 12.3% of a Black Minority Ethnic (BME) workforce].  NHS NES was closest at 12.28%.  Only 1 other Board managed to report a BME employment rate into double figures, NHS Golden Jubilee at 11.39%.    If all 22 Boards had achieved the same employment levels reached by the BBC, there would have been 15,310 more BME people working in the NHS in Scotland.    If Boards had managed to mirror the national UK average of 8% BME people, this would mean an extra 8,502 BME people working in the NHS.  This is roughly equivalent to the population of Haddington and provided a graphic illustration of the number of BME people missing in 2013 from the workforce of the NHS.

Based on these figures, it was concluded that the NHS in Scotland appeared to have significant problems with institutional discrimination^[1] in the employment of BME people.  The research was shared with all 22 Board Chief Executives and with the Cabinet Secretary for Health, along with an invitation to discuss what the data revealed and to meet and discuss how performance on employment equality could be improved.  Not one of the poorly performing 20 Chief Executives believed they needed help.

Just last month, June 2015, more workforce equality profiling reports needed to be published to meet the now not so shiny new specific equality duties in Scotland.  For the 20 poorly performing Chief Executives, the mirror of independent research will have triggered a considerable and involuntary release of the trapped winds of denial.  Across the whole NHS in Scotland, the employment rate of BME people has fallen in the last 2 years, from the already dismal levels of 2.77% in 2013 to 2.44% in 2015.

Stephen Lawrence :
1974-1993

Alongside that dire figure, the proportion of the NHS workforce which refuses to provide their employer with their ethnic identity remains stubbornly stuck at close to 30%.  

While the Metropolitan Police force has been under intense and righteous scrutiny since the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the Inquiry report from Sir William Macpherson in 1999, the Met has managed to admit to being racist in its function as a force and as an employer, and undertaken considerable work to eradicate that racism, all in the intense glare of public scrutiny and accountability.  

Scotland's NHS, the Board Chief Executives and the Cabinet Secretary for Health are curiously reluctant to take that crucial first step in eliminating racism.

[1] Institutional discrimination has been and will be defined in a range of ways.  The following definitions relate to race in the UK but can be amended to equally apply to all other protected characteristics.

"The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people."
The Macpherson report

"If racist consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs or practices, that institution is racist whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have racial intentions."
The Commission for Racial Equality

Two Ticks ? More like Two Fingers from Scotland's NHS to disability equality in employment

Two years ago in 2013, public bodies in Scotland published their first workforce profiling reports, required by Scotland's then new specific equality duties.

In a series of research reports Equality Here, Now looked at what this revealed.

Two things emerged.  An ultra-casual approach on the part of many in the public sector to meeting the duties, either in the letter or in the spirit of the law.  Secondly, that institutional discrimination remains very much alive and flourishing in what is often described in political double-speak as a 'fairer Scotland'.

When looking at the NHS, the research found that the NHS in Scotland appeared to have significant problems with institutional discrimination in the employment of disabled people.  

Just 0.86% of the whole NHS workforce across Scotland identified as disabled.  This at a time when the census revealed Scotland has 20% of the population identifying as disabled.

Two years on, research - based on data published by NHS Boards themselves - reveals that across the whole workforce and after another two years of working on disability equality, the NHS can now conjure up 0.95% workers identifying as disabled.  

Look at the table on page 14, providing some detail and texture to the bald but embarrassing and shameful figure of 0.95%.  Out of the 22 NHS Boards serving [not very well, it has to be said] the population of Scotland, just 1 comes anywhere near employing the proportion of disabled people in Scotland's population.  NHS 24 has 20.27% of its workforce identifying as disabled.  

The performance of the rest of the 21 Boards looks dismal in comparison.  Keep in mind that this is not about percentages, this is about disabled people being given the opportunity to work, or not in the case of most of the NHS.  That opportunity is being denied them by the shockingly bad performance of most NHS Boards in meeting their specific and general equality duties.  There can only be one of two possible reasons for this.  Either most NHS Boards are led by a Chief Executive not competent in complying with the law on equality, or the institutional discrimination against disabled people in employment is deep and ingrained across most of the NHS in Scotland.  

In the many questions on performance which Chief Executives need to answer and be held to account for, an obvious one is just why is it that NHS 24 can achieve a reasonable level of employment of disabled people while they in their own Board can't ?

Do they not work together, learn from each other ?  Share insights to what works and what doesn't work ?  There is even a dedicated Equality Directorate for the whole NHS and based in NHS Health Scotland.  Why is it that Directorate is unable to ensure that progress with disability equality in employment is part of a coherent national strategy for the whole of the NHS ?  The Cabinet Secretary for Health in Scotland needs to get a grip of Chief Executives failing to do their job.  She would smack them hard enough and quick enough if they fell behind on waiting times.

As well as the Cabinet Secretary putting 21 Chief Executives on the seriously naughty step for awful performance on disability equality, the Equality & Human Rights Commission should also be holding the Cabinet Secretary, Boards and Chief Executives to account, given the obvious and continuing failings in tackling disability discrimination in employment.  It is a fundamental part of the reason the EHRC exists.

The clue to their failure to wave the big stick of legal action on compliance is to be found in the Official Record of an evidence session involving 2 senior officials from the EHRC and the Scottish Parliament's Equal Opportunities Committee last year, just after the referendum vote on independence.  During some occasionally tough questioning, the Scotland Director, Mr Pringle, was asked how many public bodies had the EHRC taken to court for non-compliance with the equality duties.  The eventual and clearly reluctant answer was :

We have never taken a public authority in Scotland to court. We have never had to.

The NHS is in trouble on disability equality and those responsible seem unwilling or unable to get out of the inequality jail they have created with their lack of meaningful efforts over a number of years.  As a single measure of just how deep that trouble is, a look at the NHS Grampian workforce report for 2013/14 and published in January 2015 tells the reader, on page 15, that :

NHS Grampian has been given the right to display the “Disability Symbol” on our literature. This is in recognition of our commitment to employing disabled people and our assurance to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for a job vacancy and consider them on their abilities.

Yet, just a few lines on and the report notes :

The number of disabled staff employed by NHS Grampian has shown a decrease in 2013/14. 73 staff considered themselves disabled in 2012/13.

This represents a stunningly eloquent illustration of the bankrupt nature of the 2-ticks symbol sponsored by Job Centre Plus and exposes it as the sham window dressing it really is  It also illuminates the bankruptcy in the capacity of the NHS to analyse its own data and deal with the stark realities which it conveys.  That Scotland's NHS is, for the most part, institutionally discriminatory in its employment of disabled people.

Scotland's NHS is, for the most part,
institutionally discriminatory in its
 employment of disabled people