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

Scotland's public sector executives paid in full by government- even when failing to make race equality happen

It is now some 50 years since the Race Relations Act of 1965 first outlawed discrimination on the grounds of colour, race, ethnicity or national origin.  It was extended in the 1968 Act to include a remit in the spheres of employment and housing.  In the Race Relations Act of 1976, almost 40 years ago, the Commission for Racial Equality was created to make sure the even more robust provisions of that Act on racism and discrimination were implemented.  More legislation on race equality followed in 2000, 2003, 2006, and in the Equality Act 2010.

You would think that Parliament has been sending a clear enough message, particularly to public bodies, that racism and discrimination needs to be eliminated.

And yet, 50 years on, current data tells us that the NHS in Scotland is unable to identify the ethnicity of over 29% of their workforce and does not yet routinely monitor the patient experience by ethnic identity and so provide us with evidence of the presence/absence of racism in service provision.  Councils in Scotland are little better.  Almost 40% of Scotland's total council workforce remains unidentified in terms of ethnicity, and very few Councils routinely gather data on service user by ethnic identity and so offer us evidence of the presence/absence of racism in council service provision.

Elsewhere, the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Fiona Hyslop, recently appointed Richard Findlay as Board Chairperson of Creative Scotland.  Looked at another way, the body charged with the strategic development of culture in Scotland is led by an all-white Board, with no Visible Minority Ethnic people on the Board at all. 

There is clearly a need for fundamental change to doing the same old, same old, in Scotland on race equality.  The evidence shows that approach is not working and that institutional discrimination on the basis of race remains embedded and ingrained in how Scotland is run.  It is this embedded racism which finds just a few years ago Visit Scotland having to rush out a hastily air-brushed revision of a tourist poster for a government-backed Gathering in which all faces in the crowd were white.

Racism remains a huge challenge for all, 50 years on.  Channel 4 recognised just how big that was when in January this year it published a fairly radical 360° Diversity Strategy.  As Channel 4 puts it :

"In the past, some elements of diversity have been put in the 'too difficult' box.  Our 360° Diversity Charter sets out to smash that box, by using all the talent available - both inside and outside our industry"

They have  set ambitious targets on employment and on how Channel 4 makes and commissions programmes, and links delivery of those goals by 2020 to the pay of senior executives.

I recently asked First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, if government would give serious consideration to a similar strategic approach [to that of Channel 4] and if not, why not ?.

"government is not considering adopting
an approach linking equality targets
and the performance pay of senior staff"

What I got was "government is not considering adopting an approach linking equality targets and the performance pay of senior staff".  No 'why not'.  That was clearly something for the 'too difficult' box.

Looked at another way, our First Minister is happy to go on paying Chief Executives of Scotland's 22 health boards and 32 councils all of their basic pay and any performance bonuses, even though they are failing to deliver race equality in any measurable sense after 50 years of being told they needed to make it happen.  Yet another way to look at the First Minister's refusal is to conclude that, unlike Channel 4, she does not want the best talent available in running Scotland's NHS or Councils.

The BBC, Priest Holes, the Tardis, and the Magic Roundabout

Research shows that some organisations in Scotland's sprawling public sector are quite good when it comes to employing Catholics and offering evidence that sectarianism can be eliminated in the employment functions of the public sector.  Organisations like Skills Development Scotland and Scottish Enterprise had, as at April 2013, 16.4% and 15% of their workforce identifying as Catholic, setting a benchmark for the rest of Scotland.

Sadly, they are the exception rather than the rule, with just 10 Scotland's 32 councils gathering data on the religious identity of their workforce.  Just one council, Dundee, managed to match the best, with 15.84% of its workforce identifying as Catholic.

Scotland's NHS fares little better, with just 2 health boards managing to come close to the benchmark, while the average employment rate for Catholics across all 22 health boards was a paltry 7.63% at April 2013.

In Scotland's 16 universities, just 3 managed to publish data on the level of employment of Catholics in their workplaces.

Not a pretty picture of Scotland, where the issue of sectarianism, so readily understood and recognised when it erupts around football matches, is an issue which dare not speak its name when it comes to jobs in the public sector.

Given the place of the BBC in society, with its capacity to shape and form opinion, whether through news reporting or through programme content, it seemed germane to have a look at its performance as an employer.  

After several months of searching online and more recently in direct contact with the BBC Trust which handles workforce diversity in the BBC, it emerges that the BBC does not gather data on whether workers are Catholic, Protestant or other, confining itself to asking if they identify as Christian.  Except of course in Northern Ireland.  Even in Northern Ireland, they did not publish the data gathered on their 682 staff there, but will do so from now on [or 'going forward' as management-speak would have us say].

Astonishing.  A UK-wide organisation with around 20,000 workers [not easy to get the precise number] and which plays a major role in informing and shaping the political discourse, does not routinely gather data which would allow it to analyse whether its employment culture and practices are free from sectarianism.  The BBC has, belatedly, accepted the link between its programme content and output and how well it performs in eliminating racism and seems willing to change.  It has workforce equality targets for BME people, disabled people and gender, but nothing on sectarianism.

It is some 400+ years since the persecution of Catholics in England was such that they dared not celebrate Mass, even in their own home.  Priest holes were created in many homes to allow people and their priests to, covertly, celebrate Mass and provide, in the event of a raid, somewhere to hide while the house was searched for the priest or where the vestments could be quickly hidden.  It is as if the BBC has created a 21st century equivalent of priest holes [a variant on the Tardis, perhaps] and so convinced themselves, in another twist to that classic British [mis]-management strategy, that if Catholics are not there it does not need to check if they are being discriminated against.  

Those of you lucky enough to have grown up with the BBC's Magic Roundabout as part of their transition from child to adult, will recall Dougal and how he usually brought the episode to an end with 'Time for bed'.  Wonder if we need to get Dougal back for a meeting with the BBC Trust, and this time end the meeting with 'Time to count the Catholics and Protestants'.

Time to count the Catholics and Protestants

Time the NHS in Scotland took equality out of the 'too difficult' box

Those not too hungover from the ritual of seeing off the old year and welcoming in the new may well have missed a landmark moment, at least for those people who have to deal with the effects of prejudice and discrimination every day.

I refer to the announcement by Channel 4 that, in its own words :

"In the past, some elements of diversity have been put in the “too difficult” box. Our 360° Diversity Charter sets out to smash that box, by using all the talent available – both inside and outside our industry."

The C4 Diversity Charter sets out some ambitious goals and commits to being open and transparent about how it performs in meeting these.  Instead of seemingly forever working towards equality, C4 has decided it is long overdue that the journey was brought to an end and the product delivered.

One of the more obvious areas where equality can be made to happen is in its function as an employer.  Here C4 commits to moving from employing, currently, 15% of the workforce as Visible Minority Ethnic people [C4 uses BAME] to a level of 20%, all by the year 2020.  C4 wants to reach 6% of people with disabilities, from the current 1.9%.  And for people identifying as LGB, it wants to reach 6% by 2020, from the current 2.4%.

This C4 announcement was made just as I was analysing data provided by NHS Boards in Scotland on their employment equality performance as at March 2014.  When looked at side by side, one could be forgiven for concluding that C4 is on another planet from Scotland's NHS.

While C4 wants to increase the VME proportion of its workforce from 15% to 20% by 2020, the NHS in Scotland has managed, as at March 2014 to reach an average employment rate across all Boards of just 2.81%.  

In looking to provide equality of employment opportunity for disabled people, C4 currently has 1.9% of its workforce identifying as disabled and aims to increase that to 6% by 2020.  Scotland's NHS manages just 0.8% of the workforce identifying as disabled at March 2014.

C4 has an honourable if sometimes controversial track record in using drama output to reflect the lives and experiences of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual [LGB] people.  It wants to ensure that in its function as an employer it matches that track record.  Currently it has 2.4% of the C4 workforce identifying as LGB and wants to increase this to 6% by 2020.  The NHS in Scotland currently has 1.2% of the workforce identifying as LGB.

C4 admits the challenges of making equality and diversity happen have often been put in the "too difficult" box.  It has set out a journey towards equality and diversity which smashes that box, maps out what the workplace should look like when it gets there, and has committed to an explicit timetable for arrival at the journey's end.  It has also made explicit a link between making that journey and the pay of senior staff, acknowledging that without that motivator the journey would remain stuck in the "too difficult" box.

The NHS ... has no vision of what the NHS workforce should look like, now or in the future, in terms of people's protected characteristics

The NHS in Scotland has no such plan.  It has no vision of what the NHS workforce should look like, now or in the future, in terms of people's protected characteristics.  It has no timetable for when measurable equality of employment opportunity will arrive for all people from all protected characteristics.  It has no carrot/stick with which to motivate senior NHS staff to make equality happen.

"the NHS’s continuing failure to act decisively on institutional discrimination means that some disabled people, VME people, and LGB people alive today will live out their lives and die before demonstrable equality of employment opportunity exists in the NHS"

In the same way that the NHS’s failure to eliminate health inequalities means that the man in Shettleston continues to die years before the man living in Barnton, so too does the NHS’s continuing failure to act decisively on institutional discrimination mean that some disabled people, VME people, and LGB people alive today will live out their lives and die before demonstrable equality of employment opportunity exists in the NHS.