- Conference
- 2024 National Black Members' Conference
- Date
- 15 September 2023
- Decision
- Carried
UNISON is the union for Social Workers, we are best placed to organise and support members in this area. Black members make up a large proportion of this worker group and this motion seeks to build on the excellent work of Year of Black Worker and looks to grow our membership amongst Black social workers, to become better organised and to break down barriers that exist for career progression.
Despite significant numbers of Black Members working in frontline practice, they are disproportionately under-represented in managerial and senior-level positions in social services departments and tend to be concentrated in the lower positions. Black social workers blame racism as the root cause of underrepresentation to senior and middle management level positions. Black social workers point to the ways in which institutional racism continue to play a key role in the lack of progression for Black social workers. Black social workers feel that they are often overlooked for development opportunities making progression to leadership levels a challenge.
According to Skills for Care 2020, many social workers from Black backgrounds experience racism and discrimination in the workplace, and face barriers to progression. Black social workers feel that there are barriers that prevent them from progressing in the workforce, particularly into leadership and management positions. Black social workers felt frustrated at the lack of development and training opportunities and that staff are not represented in senior positions. Other issues identified in this survey included pay gaps, lack of confidence, lack of understanding and support, and issues around acceptance, recognition, respect and being valued. The results from the survey showed that it was important to provide support and tools that address the barriers to progression to senior roles.
This is why the work being undertaken on Ethnicity Pay gap reporting is so important and will be a key tool in understanding how many Black Members are in senior roles, we must use this data to work with employers to continue to break down barriers and challenge any discrimination members face. In the Northern Region we work very closely with Show Racism the Red Card, joint work with employers and employees is undertaken to try and address issues in the workplace.
Within the Northern Region we have a Social Worker group as it is understood how challenging this area is for our members and that due to increased case loads and work pressures, turn over is high, this group seeks to support members. Work is underway to encourage more Black members to attend this group, so that it and the issues raised are reflective of the membership across this sector. The Region are also looking at producing recruitment and retention material specially for Black social workers, integral to this will be the social workers who are part of the Regional Black Members Network.
The Black Members Network have an excellent system of supporting each other at work events which ensures that where appropriate, activists from the sector in this case, social workers are present when meeting with other social workers and in particular Black Social workers, this work is complimented by organising staff.
There is real potential to organise and recruit Black Members within social workers
Conference calls on the National Black Members committee to:
Produce material aimed at Black social workers highlighting the benefits of being in UNISON;
Encourage Regions to set up Social Worker forums with a key aim of Black Member participation;
Encourage Regions and Branches to affiliate to Show Racism the Red Card and to undertake joint working where issues of discrimination are highlighted ;
Work with Regions to ensure that all Branches are working to collate Ethnicity Pay Gap data, that is analysed to try and understand what barriers exists for Black Social Workers.