Equality a lottery in the apprenticeship scheme in Scotland

A routine approach to equality in the workplace is to monitor just who is in place, what level/pay they are at and other things, like how long they stay before moving on.  With that kind of data and some basic intelligence about what your workforce should look like if discrimination was eliminated from how you recruit and retain a workforce, employers have a reasonably straightforward task in changing how they operate so that they get the diverse workforce they should have and provide evidence that discrimination has been eliminated.  It is a lot easier than landing people on the moon.

And yet.  In a session with the Equality & Human Rights Commission in September, the Scottish Parliament Equal Opportunities Committee heard, in response to a question :

The EHRC found that employee monitoring was “patchy and inconsistent across all sectors”.  Overall, performance was poor: of the 184 public authorities examined, only 27 per cent produced the full set of information on the protected characteristics of their staff. Will you comment on why performance seems to have been poor?

The EHRC response ? :

We are moving into what we are calling a diagnostic phase, in which we are working with the Scottish Government to try to get underneath the data. We can see the outcome, which is poor results, as you highlighted. We need to know why that is.

Put another way.  The organisation responsible in Scotland for regulating and enforcing the law on equality was unable or more likely unwilling to use those three little words : I don't know. 

Elsewhere in that session, the EHRC were asked about monitoring of protected characteristics of young people getting access to what is called the Modern Apprenticeship scheme in Scotland.  They said in response :

we managed to get data about the numbers of people who are involved in the current programme by different characteristics. As you know, we found—as we expected to find—significant gender segregation but also a very low level of participation among ethnic minorities and a particularly low level of participation among disabled people.

What the EHRC did not share with the Committee was that there is, as yet, no data on the protected characteristics of religion or belief, or sexual orientation.  See this response from Skills Development Scotland [SDS] which confirms that they have only just this year started monitoring these characteristics.  When asked to explain why they had not been gathering this data already, SDS replied with this.

In other words, what they and we do not know is just how well such as young Catholic people are benefiting from the Modern Apprenticeship scheme, if at all, and certainly in comparison to young Protestant people.  If the first experience of work for young people in Scotland is through a Modern Apprenticeship scheme which seriously struggles to evidence an absence of discrimination, the future of working life for those young people and their capacity to help shape a discrimination-free workplace will be forever tainted and compromised by their initial experience.

EHRC unable to get public bodies to use 1+2=3

As some people in Scotland continue to struggle to accept the vote against independence, it seemed as good a time as any for Scotland's Parliament to quiz the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] on what progress it was making with its regulatory and enforcement role in making equality happen in Scotland.

Late last month, barely a week after the referendum vote, the Equal Opportunities Committee took evidence from the EHRC in Scotland on what it has been doing since last giving evidence to the Committee on the immediate aftermath of savage cuts to the budget of the EHRC.  If you are a fan of car crash evidence sessions, you can read a transcript of the full session here.

The EHRC.  Evidence on progress with equality across the many diverse communities living in Scotland and how the discrimination they face is being dismantled, permanently.  Remembering always that although the EHRC is but a child in years, the struggle to identify and eliminate discrimination on the basis of such as race, disability and equal pay for women, has had a legal mandate for decades.

And who from the EHRC in Scotland turned up to present evidence ?  Two white, middle-aged men, dressed in the most boring-but-safe of suits in which so many seek to remain anonymous, neutral and non-threatening to the status quo.  Before the session had even started, the evidence was being presented to the Committee in the most powerful, non-verbal manner.

One of the most obvious places to find discrimination is in the workplace.  The Committee soon questioned the EHRC on this, with member John Mason asking :

The EHRC found that employee monitoring was “patchy and inconsistent across all sectors”.  Overall, performance was poor: of the 184 public authorities examined, only 27 per cent produced the full set of information on the protected characteristics of their staff. Will you comment on why performance seems to have been poor?

The EHRC response ? :

 We are moving into what we are calling a diagnostic phase, in which we are working with the Scottish Government to try to get underneath the data. We can see the outcome, which is poor results, as you highlighted. We need to know why that is.

In other words, those three little words a lot of people struggle to use in their work : I don't know.  

Later in the session, Siobhan McMahon asked about progress on equal pay :

you mentioned pay gap issues when you talked about matters that have come up in discussions with Scottish Government officials. How are you taking that forward? As much as discussion at that level is welcome—I am sure that the committee will welcome that—it is a case of taking that forward and getting real progress on an issue that frustrates many of us. Have you set out anything concrete that you wish to take forward with the Scottish Government?

The EHRC response :

The way in which pay gaps have been identified and measured in the public sector is wildly inconsistent at the moment ......public bodies are adopting a variety of ways of calculating pay gaps. Working with the Government and Close the Gap, we want to understand why there is such variety ....

So, not only does the EHRC not know why the data published by public bodies is inconsistent, they are unable to do anything on closing the equal pay gap until they can get that consistency in data.

Elsewhere in the session, Siobhan McMahon asked about the EHRC using enforcement powers in relation to the performance of public bodies on the equality duties.  

Yes, for example. How many times have you taken a public authority to court for not complying?

The EHRC response ? :

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

In summary.  The EHRC regulatory function is a failure since they are unable to get public bodies to gather sufficient good quality data on their workforce which would enable the identification of discrimination and allow work to eliminate it.  They are also unable to get public bodies to use the same arithmetical approach to calculating pay gaps so that action can be take to close and eliminate those.

In the same way, the EHRC's enforcement function would seem to be a failure since, by their own admission, the EHRC has never taken a public body to court.

We can but hope that if equality legislation is devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we create a new regulatory and enforcement body which comes up with better answers than "we don't know".

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

Racism tainting equality in Council job opportunities in Scotland ?

Recent revelations around the Metropolitan Police's handling of the murder inquiry into the death of Stepehen Lawrence over 20 years ago offers fresh evidence of just how little has changed since Macpherson first found that the Met was an organisation which was institutionally racist.  It has sadly become an almost institutional convenience for the rest of the public sector over the last few decades to shrug the corporate shoulders and suggest that racism is really only a London problem, with most of it being an issue for the boys and girls in blue.  

Scotland has a well developed shrug when it comes to racism, usually claiming at the same time to be a world leader in tolerance.  Unless you are English, in which case another set of complex rules of tolerance are called up.

Last year, research into how Scotland's NHS and Universities performed on making equality of employment opportunity happen for BME people showed things were not that great.  Not good.  Not good at all.  It appears Scotland's tartan-beribboned, shortbread-tin brand of Brigadoon-like tolerance does not include equality of employment opportunity for BME people, with thousands of BME people posted missing from the payrolls of NHS and University employers.

One year on from when public sector employers published their first reports in which they supposedly profiled their workforce by protected characteristics [many did not, but that is another blog], a look at what evidence has been published by Scotland's 32 local authorities tells us that councils are just as bad as the rest of the public sector, with all the evidence available suggesting institutional racism is embedded in the daily employment practices, policies and cultures of Scotland's councils.  How else to explain the 17,700+ BME people missing from the payroll of Councils ?

Not one of the 32 local authorities across Scotland manages to get close to, never mind exceed, the standard [12.3% of the workforce identifies as BME] set by the BBC.  Edinburgh City Council is the nearest, almost 10% points behind at 2.7%.  It is germane to note that Edinburgh’s report which published this data also reveals that the target it set for itself to attain by way of a BME workforce profile was [at 2012] 4.7%.  It is even more germane to note that the target Edinburgh set itself and failed to reach is in itself considerably short of the 8% BME population in Edinburgh as at 2011.

Put another way, the best performing local authority in Scotland on race equality in employment is, by its own standards, failing to meet a quite modest target of employing BME people.  The implications for race equality in Scotland’s other 31 local authorities are profoundly disturbing.

It is inevitable that if BME people are being excluded from work with the NHS, Universities and Councils in Scotland, then the experience of BME people in accessing and using what is on offer from these key building blocks of Scotland's society will be one where racism is systemic and a daily experience for too many.  Scotland seems all to willing to applaud the courage of Rosa Parks in refusing to accept segregation on the buses of Montgomery and give up her seat to a white man, and yet is unable to find the same courage to deal with the systemic racism in its own public sector workplaces.

Bus segregation : Atlanta 1956

This is simply unacceptable.

If all the BME 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 race discrimination in council employment, that queue for equality of employment opportunity would reach 10.6 miles and take us all the way from Holyrood to Broxburn and close to where the oxymoronically titled Improvement Service is based.

Job segregation : Scotland 2014

People can either continue to pretend that there is no racism in Scotland, or emulate the courage of Rosa Parks in some small ways.

Share the report with your friends and colleagues.  Giving oxygen to the evidence of this systemic racism 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 BME 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 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 BME 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 Scotland's BME people.
Tweet to @JohnSwinney

Getting married more easy than getting a job, for LGB people in Scotland's public sector

Just when Scotland's chatterati had become puffed up into a grand conceit of themselves over the much-trumpeted passage of same-sex marriage legislation, along comes some cold hard facts which deflate that feel-good hot air surrounding the perceptions of Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual [LGB] equality in Scotland.

Last year, research into what Scotland's NHS and Universities were managing to do in making equality of employment opportunity happen for LGB people revealed some harsh realities.  In both sectors it is estimated that over 10,000 LGB people are missing from the payroll.

This year, research into the performance of Councils in the same area reveals yet more of that same old homophobia in employment.  Using a model for employment rates of LGB people cited by Stonewall and government, and comparing this to what Councils publish in their data on LGB employment, there are 14,779 LGB people missing from Council payrolls across Scotland.  Exceeding even the abysmal failures of Scotland's NHS and Universities combined.

It is not just that Councils are such poor employers when it comes to equality of employment opportunity for LGB people.  They also avoid gathering the evidence which would allow them to identify discrimination in their practices and cultures, change things, and employ more LGB people.  For almost 95% of the council workforce across Scotland we - and Councils as employers - don't know the sexual orientation of workers.  In most cases, this is because councils have not even been trying to gather the data.

There are any number of ways to look at the data published by councils and conclude that discrimination is rooted deep in the systems, cultures and practices of councils.  One of these is to imagine if all the LGB 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 homophobia and discrimination evident in council employment.  That queue for equality of employment opportunity would reach 8.9 miles and take us all the way from Holyrood to the site of the Battle of Prestonpans and the Jacobite Rising in 1745.

If you are shocked by this and want to bring pressure to bear on politicians who must carry responsibility for this betrayal of LGB 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 LGB people is vital if we are to secure real, measurable 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 LGB 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 LGB 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 this betrayal of LGB people.

Tweet to @JohnSwinney

Councils create a queue over 17 miles long on disability employment equality

Most people in Scotland know, vaguely, that COSLA [the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities] has something to do with the work of councils. Few would be confident about describing exactly how COSLA impacts on people in their daily lives or indeed whether it makes a measurable difference to any of those lives.

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 :

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.

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 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

Who can't handle the truth .... on equality ?

In my search to find out why Visit Scotland only employs one worker [out of 763] confident enough to identify as Catholic, I have uncovered what appears to be a stunning disregard for the truth.

From my previous blog on this subject, readers will know that the Chief Executive of Visit Scotland, Malcolm Roughead, offered what appeared to be cast iron assurances that Visit Scotland was compliant with the law on equality.  To quote from the Visit Scotland response :

"I have referred your letter to my colleague Chris McCoy, our Equality & Diversity manager, who informs me that she has had confirmation from the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] who are fully supportive of our Equality Mainstreaming Report & Objective and are content that we are complying with the legislation as it stands."

Since that response and because of the unsatisfactory nature of it, I referred my concerns to the EHRC in Scotland and, amongst other matters, asked :

Can you please advise if the EHRC is advising public bodies generally on whether or not they are compliant in relation to the general and specific equality duties, or only in response to specific requests from organisations ?

The response from the EHRC flashed me back to the early 90's when Jack Nicholson chomped his way through the scenery of the film 'A Few Good Men' and blistered that killer phrase into film history :

"You want the truth ?  You can't handle the truth."

The response from the EHRC as to whether they were handing out gold stars of compliance with the specific duties to our public bodies ? :

"On your final question, the Commission has not been in touch with any organisation to state that they are compliant."

I have now asked Visit Scotland to provide a copy of the evidence it has that the EHRC confirms Visit Scotland is compliant with the legislation.

I do believe we, the citizens of Scotland, can handle the truth on whether or not our public bodies are compliant with the law on equality.