- Conference
- 2015 National Black Members' Conference
- Date
- 10 September 2014
- Decision
- Carried
It is an accepted fact that the makeup of a government institution should be reflective of the local demography of the area in which it is located. For many years this has been an aspiration. Recently, most have made tremendous strides to address this situation.
Unfortunately what this has resulted in is a skewed workforce. The balance is now more representative of the local demography but Black officers primarily constitute the majority of the lowest tier of employees.
Recent FOI request analysis of local authority redundancy statistics for the last 2 years bears out the fact that Black people have been more disproportionately made redundant over the last 3 years. Arguing the facts of this point is not beneficial to either those who have already lost their jobs or those who are likely to be at risk when the next inevitable waves of cuts start.
A principal solution to reduce the risk and/or impact of cuts on Black workers is to ensure that more black members are further up within the hierarchy (food chain) of the organisations they are employed to.
Conference instructs NBMC to contact the training and education arms of Unison and request a joint work programme that will:
1)Design and effectively promote/communicate courses ear-marked for Black members to further advance their academic acumen therefore improving their likelihood of being considered for promotions.
2)Create a programme to mentor and support black officers to chart a pathways that will enable them to be qualified for promotions.
3)Develop a support network to assist black workers with completing applications & submissions for promotion recruitment and insight of interviewing techniques to further enhance their chances of success at interviews.