- Conference
- 2022 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 14 February 2022
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference, funding cuts and the government’s long-delayed plans to address social inequalities is one of the major causes of in-work poverty experienced by Black Workers and the cause of severe inter-generational inequality in Black communities.
Recent funding increases have not undone £15bn of cuts in central government grants to local authorities between 2010 and 2020, coupled with the disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Black community
Conference also notes that the situation has been exacerbated by the impact of over a decade of austerity, resulting in cuts to equality departments and very low level of recruitment in local government and the public sector.
In 2017, the government committed in its manifesto to “ask” large employers to publish information on their ethnicity pay gaps. In 2020, only 11% of companies had published this information.
The introduction of this important measure is needed to identify the disparities within the workforce and forces employers to be accountable.
UNISON Black workers are committed to addressing issues on racial equality and believe this campaign must be a priority for the local government service group.
This Conference calls on the Local Government Service Group Executive to:
1)Develop an action plan for use in the workplace including a collective bargaining fact sheet for branches to use when tackling racial pay inequality in the workplace
2)Encourage branches to make racial pay inequality part of their diversity strategy to engage with employers to publish the information on their ethnicity pay gap.