Statistics from the 2001 census state that unemployment in Nottingham was 9.7% as a whole, whilst 25% was made up of BAME.
Why do you think ethnic minorities, especially African Caribbean who actively seek work still encounter high levels of barriers to employment?
4 comments:
Recruitment industry without wanting to sound bias has had an influx of eastern european work force which seems to be the prefered source at the moment.
Alot of large organisation without seem to use these workers and have a set up where it is impossible for other people to gain employment there as they do not speak their language.
Alot of this has been in the food industry or warehousing and recruitment agencies package this up and sell it as the ideal labour solution.
Also clients expect more and wages £5.53 (increasing in October to £5.70ish) has unrealistic demands on what they should get for their money, this is fulled by agencies signing up to all sort of business agreements for low rate.
Temporary recuitment now sees all workers as expendable and they do not have the loyality to their client base that once was.
I worked for a large agency on a site contract and I had 385 workers contracted on site to me at peak. 95% of this work force was polish, 5 % were other communties.
A non christmas time my work force was 125, again mostly polish, I only had 2 gentlemen that worked for me that were from BAME community.
Unfortunatly these statistics are the true reflection of the industry.
This is a important subject that needs discussing now and particularly before Britain follows America's lead and makes it mandatory to work for benefits.
It would be interesting to know how many of this 25%is made up of women. In the 80s some women fell into the trap of not working and receiving state benefits until their last child became 16yrs of age. Going back to work it's a struggle as many find that they cannot find work that pays them more that their benefits - not a great incentive.
Also the government has recently reduced the age of the child from 16 to (something or other - 12???) therefore women need to have access to study, training and volunteering (perhaps mentoring) to prepare them for a position in the work place that is not necessarily entry level where it is more likely to be over worked and under paid. Working SHOULD improve quality of life for the worker and their dependants.
Some of these services (study, training, volunteering, mentoring)can be delivered by the voluntary sector in partnership with other agencies - community groups, local colleges, etc.
cb
Having read your question i would have initially said instutional racism and prejudice however i dont think you can ignore the part played by the decline in the number of jobs available. In 1968 Rolls Royce took on 750 apprentices in 2007 Rolls royce took on 15 apprentices,also the arrival of new techonology/machinery means that one person can do the work that previously took 5 people.
Most occupational areas have gone through a recession and the influx of eastern European migrant workers has made it more difficult for the BAME community who remain at the bottom of the pile. In short our slice of the cake is smaller, however there are far more people at the table, racism has also become more subtle and smarter, so there is a number of factors that combine to ensure that the people bought in to do menial work remain at the bottom of the pile no matter how big the pile gets. (Peace)
It would be interesting to look at recent statistics, given the current economic climate, although I'm not confident there would be much of a difference in terms of the percentage of those from BME backgrounds in employment. It sounds cliched but I firmly believe that institutional and 'personal' racism still has it's place in the workplace, although much more covert. Considering that black people have always been misrepresented, numbers wise, in the workplace, today is even worse as there are many more EU workers who have been willing to take the lower paid, unskilled positions. White British workers are finding themselves being 'priced out' of certain sectors, eg construction and manual labour, nevermind those from African-Caribbean backgrounds.
It would be interesting to look at gender too. How many single mothers from African-Caribbean backgrounds are not in work because they are raising families single-handedly? How many of these women return to work once the children are of school age? I wouldn't like to speculate here but I would certainly be keen to look at these numbers as it may be an indicator as to why the number of black people that are unemployed is grossly disproportionate.
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