On a quick visit to the COSLA web site I tried to find high-level, prominent references to equality. I looked at this page where reference was made to COSLA's 'Executive Groups'.
There are 6 such groups and these would appear to indicate the priority areas that COSLA and councils devote energy and resources to in order that citizens can experience a better quality of civic life, or somesuch. None of the groups reference equality in their titles and the visit to the web site sucked the energy from me so quickly I was loathe to explore further. Suffice to say that equality, on the evidence of a quick fumble around their web site, is not a high-profile, vibrant, electrifying area of work for COSLA.
Almost a year ago I looked at what the NHS and Scotland's universities had been doing on making disability equality happen in their function as employers. The reality was a pretty dismal performance and my blog on the NHS's performance can be read here while the research report published on the performance of Universities can be read here. Neither sector covered themselves in glory, with the NHS managing to achieve just 0.86% of the workforce identifying as disabled while our Universities managed a marginally better average of just 2.25% across Scotland. My conclusion was that between them, the NHS and Universities were missing 24,283 disabled people from their payrolls.
Scanning the horizon of work on equality in the public sector since last April reveals little evidence that either the NHS or the Universities are actively working at remedying the institutional disability discrimination they harbour and employing more disabled people.
Given local authorities, or councils, are one of the other biggest employers in the public sector, it seemed worth a closer look at their performance, basing an analysis on what data they themselves published in line with the requirements of the specific equality duties.
The findings do not inspire. Councils do employ disabled people. To the extent that they make up just 1.76% of the whole Scottish council workforce. I calculate that the shortfall across all Councils in terms of workers who identify as disabled people is 28,650, more than the shortfall of all NHS Boards and Universities combined.
Or looking at it another way. If all the disabled people missing from the payrolls of Scotland’s local authorities were to form a queue to speak to their MSP in Scotland’s parliament about the disability discrimination in council employment, that queue for equality of employment opportunity would reach 17.2 miles and take us all the way from Holyrood over the water and into Rosyth.
Disabled people looking for equality of employment opportunity have been betrayed, for decades, by Scotland's public sector.
In 1983, Neil Kinnock made a speech in which he warned people of the consequences of voting Margaret Thatcher back into government. You can read that speech here.
For some people, Kinnock's words at the end of the speech delivered to the people of Bridgend resonate to this day, over 30 years on :
On the basis of the data we now have access to on the performance of Scotland's public sector in employment equality some 30 years on from that pivotal moment at Bridgend, it would seem Neil should have added :I warn you not to be ordinary
I warn you not to be young
I warn you not to fall ill
I warn you not to get old.
I warn you not to be be disabled and looking for work.If you are shocked by this and want to bring pressure to bear on politicians who must carry responsibility for this betrayal of disabled people, there are a number of simple things you can do.
Share the report with your friends and colleagues. Giving oxygen to this betrayal of disabled people is vital if we are to secure real equality of opportunity.
Ask your councillor what she or he thinks of the performance of your council and what action they will take to employ more disabled 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 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 disabled 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 betrayal of disabled people.
Tweet to @JohnSwinney
Good work, thanks. It is surprising that equality features so low or not at all on the COSLA agenda, especially given Councils' statutory duties. But at least this is open to examination and audit. It s more difficult to comment on voluntary sector performance in this respect, though certainly their ethos ought to yield better results. But is it, and how do we know?
ReplyDeleteThose of us who have worked with Councils are beyond being surprised what they don't do and get away with - one of the few sacred cows left in Scotland.
ReplyDeleteRecent events of notice to quit being given to COSLA by some Councils may help drag them all into the 20th century.
As for the voluntary sector, I have tried recently to find evidence, as opposed to rhetoric, about their performance in equality. Such evidence is as rare as sightings of compassion in the heart of Ian Duncan Smith.