COMMENT

In 1999 Sir William Macpherson published the Stephen Lawrence report. The report shattered the complacency that had built up in the public sector on race equality since the Brixton riots in 1981.

The report came up with a definition of institutional racism and described it as a major factor in explaining the failure of the justice system in catching Stephen Lawrence's killers and bringing them to justice. The report said that institutional racism was not confined to the justice system and that all institutions should take action to deal with it.

This was nothing new to black workers who have spent years trying to highlight the lack of access to employment, promotion, training, whilst suffering harassment and bullying in the workplace. However, the acceptance of institutional racism and the debate around it presented a new opportunity for progress to be made.

The Government's response to the report was the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 which placed new duties on public authorities to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and promote good race relations between people of different racial groups. More recently this legislation has been strengthened as a result of the European Union Race Directive (Article 13), being incorporated into UK law.

New regulations that came into force in July of this year have amended the law to include new definitions for indirect discrimination and racial harassment and shift the burden of proof in employment tribunal cases from the employee to the employers. Unfortunately these changes only apply to discrimination on the grounds of race, national and ethnic origin and not on colour and nationality, which are grounds also covered in the Race Relations Act. This will lead to confusion and will ultimately have to be resolved by the courts.

Employment is fundamental to economic and social well being of all communities. Currently the unemployment rates in black communities is three times higher than in white communities and where black employees do have jobs, they are likely to be concentrated at the lower levels of the workforce. A recent TUC report, Black and Underpaid highlighted the pay gap and reported that on average black men earn pounds 97 per week less than white men.

The Government has a crucial role to play in providing leadership and setting the tone of the debate on major social issues. Changes in the race relations legislation provide a framework that will help to make inroads in the entrenched racism that exists in the labour market. However the tone that the Government has set in debates on asylum and migrant workers is doing much to damage the efforts of those who are seeking to use the legislation to make real change.

The political debate on immigration and more recently asylum has always been a euphemism for the debate on racism. No amount of window dressing by talk of secure borders, managed migration, illegal trafficking and economic refugees can disguise the real discourse that is present in the media and in the speeches of politicians. It's the same debate that has existed since the 1958 riots provoked by white extremists in Notting Hill and Nottingham. It is whether black people are welcome in Britain; whether jobs, housing, education and health care are being monopolised by black people; whether black immigrants are being treated more favourably than the white population.

There is no recognition that the health service has relied on commonwealth immigrants and more recently, migrant workers from the Philippines, India and Southern Africa or that the private companies which provide catering, cleaning and security rely on workers from Africa and Eastern Europe; no recognition that the growth of modern day Britain relies on the migrant workers that work in the lowest paid jobs that nobody else wants to do.

The refusal to recognise the reality of modern day Britain in these debates on immigration and asylum is a refusal to recognise that black workers are of equal value. That the national identity has been formed by the movement of peoples. Britain's labour force, along with the rest of Europe's, is growing older and the ratio of workers to pensioners is growing. There are increasing labour shortages in both the skilled and unskilled sections of the labour market. The public sector has once again been at the forefront of recruiting migrant workers to fill the gaps.

Unless the Government is prepared to stand up and defend the role of black workers in our society, the ills that are faced by settled black communities will be visited on the current wave of migrants that are being recruited to sustain our ailing public services. Until we have seriously tackled the issues of discrimination at work, we cannot seriously claim that racism is no longer a problem in our society.

Wilf Sullivan is the national black members officer of UNISON

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