Recession

The recent banking collapse and subsequent economic downtown has revealed that we are not living in the brave new world that we were told. Where boom and bust no longer existed and social justice flourished, where getting supper rich was a virtue and entrepreneurship the ultimate aspiration. The credit crunch has put pay to the illusion that we are living in a wealthy society where most people are relatively well off and only the lazy and those without aspirations are living on the dole.

Of course the reality for black communities was far from the illusion pushed by newspapers, magazines and black media. The constant promotion of black singers, TV celebrities and entrepreneurs presenting the illusion that the black community was benefiting from this wealth and that if we set our sights high enough anything was possible. Racism was no longer an issue only our ability to negotiate the bureaucracy and exploit the new diversity policies was necessary, after all diversity was good for business. Sadly, the reality was very different. The place of black workers in the labour market did not fundamentally change. The majority of black workers in employment remained in low paid jobs and levels of unemployment were still to two to three times that of the white community a state of permanent recession and poverty.

Child poverty is a good indicator of what is happening to the poorest in our society. The increasing gap between the rich and the poor is reflected in the proportion of children living in poverty which grew from 1 in 10 in 1979 to 1 in 3 in 1998. Today, 30 per cent of children in Britain are living in poverty. The recent focus on child poverty that resulted from the Keep the Promise March last October when supporters from trade unions and community groups came together from across the UK came together, for the ‘Keep the Promise’ rally demanding that the government deliver on its commitment to halve child poverty by 2010 and end it by 2020 highlighted a problem that is not often talked about in the black community.

The situation in the black community is even worse. The TUC in its 2006 report ‘Black Workers, Jobs and Poverty’ highlighted that poverty rates ran at 20% for the white community while they were 38% for the black (African and Caribbean Communities), 32% for the Chinese community and 45% for the Asian community. Some communities are particularly hard hit with the African community suffering poverty rates of 45% and with poverty rates in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi running at 69%. Politicians and academics have often argued that these poverty levels are related to the lack of skills in black communities or cultural factors resulting in high levels of worklessness among women in some communities. However the reality has more to do with the difficulty that black workers have in accessing jobs in all parts of the labour market which results in different groups occupying different segments of the labour market. When as in the case of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Community the textile industry which they worked in collapse they found it impossible to get work in other parts of the labour market (partly because there was little or no other work in the area) and have been confined to working in restaurants or driving taxis.

The Government has worked to close the ethnic minority employment gap but getting people into work will not alone solve the problem of poverty in black communities. Research carried out by the New Policy Institute indicated that more than half of all the children in low-income households have someone in their family doing paid work. The TUC has consistently argued that if the Government wants to tackle issues such as child poverty than it needs to tackle race discrimination in the labour market both in terms of improving access to work but just as importantly dealing with race discrimination in the workplace as black communities are at the core of deprivation in the UK. The danger now is that tackling race discrimination in the labour market will fall off the policy agenda in the face of such a severe recession

In a recent report on black workers and the recession the TUC highlighted the tendency for black workers to suffer disproportionately in a recession. So far the evidence is that this has not happened. However it is also noticeable that the industries showing the strongest growth include those dominated by the public sector – health, social work, public administration and education areas where there is a high proportion of black workers. But this picture is changing rapidly – a recent survey by the Daily Telegraph found that local authorities are cutting their budgets by up to 10 per cent, with large job losses likely over the next three years. If public sector cuts accelerate, the fall in the employment and unemployment gaps could end and we would see the picture of employment for black workers return to the pattern of previous recessions.

Unfortunately the problems of a recession are not confined to unemployment the recession will undoubtedly make it harder for black workers to get promotion, access to on the job training and is likely exacerbate the pay gap between black and white workers. This is why we must ensure that race equality issues are at the heart of the collective bargaining agendas of our unions