Racial discrimination over redundancy ‘must end’

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has called for further political action to be taken in order to prevent ethnic minorities from being selected for redundancy for discriminatory reasons.

Frances O’Grady, deputy general secretary for the TUC, has welcomed employment law changes made by the government in the last decade to combat racism, such as the introduction of the Ethnic Minority Employment Task Force.

However, she expressed concern that black and other minority workers are still being mistreated in the areas of recruitment and redundancy, particularly since the start of the recession.

She therefore called on more improvements to be made to race relations in private sector employment in order to foster a fairer working culture.

Ms O’Grady said: “The principle of equality is indivisible – it simply cannot apply to some groups of workers and not to others.”

The government is currently looking to address the problem of discrimination via the forthcoming Equality Bill, which will also seek to provide fairer employment conditions for women.