A study from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community in December 2012, has found that employers discriminate against applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds if their names are not anglicised.
The study found that women from black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds who anglicised their names saw a 50% drop in the number of applications required before getting an interview. (Read Anonymous application forms proposed to stop discrimination: 11 January, 2013)
The group is now encouraging businesses to use blank -name, anonymous application forms which would hide a candidate’s name, background and schooling, which they believe will help eliminate discrimination in employment.
The uphill battle against discrimination in employment
What is odd about this study is the glaring fact overlooked, that even with blank-name application forms what is to stop employers from discriminating against applicants once they see them face-to-face? The study proves that these employers do not want applicants from ethnic backgrounds, hence why the black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women had to anglicise their names; so how the All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community believe that blank-name forms will improve employer discrimination flies in the face of their own report.
A TUC report titled, “Black Matters“, in August 2012, said that unemployment for young black men have doubled from 28.8% in 2008 to 55.9% towards the end of 2011, which is twice the rate of young white people. (P.4)
At the annual TUC Black Workers’ Conference in 2011 (Read A bleak future for black and minority ethnic British workers says TUC conference), the TUC said the unemployment rate for Black and Asian workers rose from 10.2 percent in October-December 2007, to 13 percent in 2010, a figure nearly twice as high than whites.
It was also mentioned that since 2007 the rate of unemployment among black women ballooned to a massive 68 percent, and 24 percent among black males in just three years.
The uphill struggle against racial discrimination in the UK employment sector goes beyond a foreign name on an application form. It goes to the heart of European organised racism which serves to deny people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds economic equality.
When I wrote the article Economic racism responsible for wealth gap increase between whites and African-Americans says report, I highlighted how economic racism in America followed the same pattern in the UK.
I wrote:
“A report by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) on14 April 2008 titled, ‘Ten Years After: BLACK WORKERS IN EMPLOYMENT 1997 – 2007’, revealed that between 2001 and 2007 the wage gap between whites and ethnic minorities was 4.2 percent. (P.9)
For example if a white worker was earning £25,000 per year, a black or minority ethnic worker will be paid £1050 less each year. Over ten years that adds up to £10,500, over a life time of work of approximately 45 years it adds up to £47,250.
A TUC report in April 2009 titled, ‘Black Workers and the Recession’ said “...black and minority ethnic workers were still concentrated in low paid and part-time jobs, and they had difficulty in securing progression once they got jobs.” (P.3)”
I also mentioned a report by the former Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), titled ‘A lot done, a lot to do’ which said that 67 percent of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds live in the 88 most deprived wards in England.
I mentioned that at the 2009 Black Worker’s Conference Leslie Manasseh, and Chair of the 2007 Black Worker’s Conference, said that once in employment BME) workers face racial barriers to job-related training, education and promotion.
Discrimination in employment is an organised racist structure and simply having anonymous application forms is merely trying to cover a deeply ugly racist structure in the UK.
For further research:
http://www.workplacelaw.net/content/45580
