Glasgow communities of colour failed by employability services and workplace racism

A distressing picture of life at work, and a disappointing one about the support to access work, highlights a situation demanding action from local and Scottish Government, and also from employers.

Actions

• All employability services in Glasgow (and Scotland) should be designed and delivered with diverse service users as equal partners to ensure they meet their needs and are fit for purpose.
• The design must include collection and publication of competent, intersectional data across all programmes, projects and funds to enable a full assessment on whether communities of colour are accessing them, benefiting from them and succeeding in them. It should also be in partnership with grassroots organisations that currently play a vital but underfunded role in existing schemes.
• Employers must work on reporting and acting on experiences of racism in the workplace – staff of colour should be able to access independent and trusted support to raise issues of racism where the employer’s processes are not trusted. This requirement should go hand in hand with increased practical support for employers on how they can address systemic racism and become anti-racist employers.
• Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council need to commit to targeting the reduction in labour market inequality for minority ethnic communities as part of their child poverty strategies. There is a great deal of existing strategy, evidence and analysis that is not currently being used at scale to inform practice change from employers and those responsible for service delivery.