Facing up to Discrimination
I wrote the following article for a Scottish newspaper - Business am - over ten years ago which I can hardly believe on re-reading the piece again today.
The article is about tackling discrimination - in different forms - but little did I know then that equal pay would come back into my life - in such a big way.
The Business am piece also deals with the treatment of the Chhokar family whose son was violently murdered - yet his killers escaped justice by the simple tactic of blaming each other for the crime.
For reasons I still don't understand - the Scottish criminal justice system was made to look foolish and failed to intervene - on behalf of the innocent victim and the Chhokar family.
So I hope the case is re-opened and that convictions follow - because it is one of those 'landmark' cases where the law of the land - seems to be on the side of the wrongdoers.
The other big issue raised in the article is the hopelessly partisan nature of the trade unions in Scotland - which claim to represent the views of ordinary members - yet in practice are old-fashioned, Labour-only closed shops.
Ten years on nothing has changed inside the trade unions - although the rest of the world has moved on - just look at the make-up of Scottish local government and the Scottish Parliament - to see how much things have changed.
Which is the reason of course why trade union influence in Scotland has waned so dramatically - during the past decade.
Trade unions in Scotland remain completely unrepresentative organisations - they really do deserve to be taken much less seriously these days - and only have themselves to blame.
Because no one believes that Scotland's trade unions approach issues - from other than a narrow, partisan - and party political point of view.
99 times out of a 100 anyway.
Facing up to discrimination
Accusations of discrimination strike a raw nerve these days. In the wake of the brutal murder of Stephen Lawrence no one wants to face the humiliation dished out to the Metropolitan Police. At the same time, the public reacts against the charge that prejudice is everywhere, on the streets, at work and in our homes. Surely, Scotland has a new politics; our public institutions don’t discriminate routinely against fellow citizens, do they?
These are murky waters indeed. On the one hand there’s no doubt that discrimination is an everyday fact of life. Police in Scotland recorded 2,242 racial incidents last year, a 70% increase on 1998/99. What are the implications of Lord McPherson branding the biggest force in the UK institutionally racist?
No one accused individual police officers of racism in the Stephen Lawrence case since that would have missed the point. The public inquiry concluded that the Metropolitan Police failed in its collective duty of care; that Stephen Lawrence and his family were treated badly because they mattered less, because police officers were initially unsympathetic, because race and colour were unspoken issues.
In Scotland, the Chhokar family has also had to endure the pain of watching their son’s murderer go free, and the authorities are wholly to blame. The defence of the accused was hardly unique; pointing the finger at each other was predictable and should not have proved fatal to the prosecution case. How could such a basic mistake have occurred? The state now has to show this was not the result of casual prejudice. Although institutional racism is not about overt, deliberate acts, its effects can be just as powerful. Ultimately, it is hard to imagine the Chhokar family being treated so badly had they lived in Balerno or Newton Mearns.
The Scottish executive is resisting calls for a public inquiry. The Chhokars have voted with their feet believing there is little point cooperating with a judicial inquiry that fails to protect their interests, as they see them. The reputation of Scottish justice must be damaged by the failure to find an agreed way forward. Officials and politicians seem oblivious to the lessons of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. Exceptional cases require exceptional solutions; satisfying the demands of a grieving family is surely not beyond the country’s most brilliant legal minds.
Discrimination can be shocking, but it can be mundane as well, conditioned by a way of life. Reports confirm a pay gap still exists between men and women, despite legislation outlawing sex discrimination since 1975. Are nasty employers are to blame or is the problem more complex and deep-rooted? The uncomfortable truth is that much of the discrimination against women is structural, the result of how society organises itself. Women are still largely responsible for childcare. Stereotyping means that young women, even today, are more likely to become secretaries than managers. Changing these attitudes is the key to combating sex discrimination. Employers have a big responsibility, like everyone else, and deserve what they get for flouting the law, but in general the bosses are not blame.
Scottish local government is the country’s biggest employer with around 280,000 workers. Women dominate the lowest pay scales and have done for generations. Trade unions demand an equality led approach, equal pay audits to tackle the problem. The reality is that sex discrimination by employers is not the problem; women get stuck on the bottom of the pay ladder because society hands men and women different roles. Part-time cleaners (one of the largest groups) are trapped by jobs with few opportunities, not by glass ceilings. How about training people to become classroom assistants or teachers even, as adult returners to education, supported by proper childcare facilities? Now that would be radical!
Unions are often at the forefront of the equality debate. Unfortunately, their track record as equal opportunity employers is appalling. Most have far to travel before promoting themselves as non-discriminatory employers, particularly in Scotland. Equal opportunity employers reflect the local environment and believe in tackling any imbalances in the composition of the workforce. Why then are virtually all senior union officials active members of the Labour Party?
Embarrassingly, the answer is that unions institutionally discriminate against non-Labour supporters. An SNP or a Lib Dem supporter could be a typist in a Labour affiliated trade union, but not a manager. The movement is in favour of equal opportunities, but politics gets in the way of unions acting as good employers. In Scotland, less than 40% of members support the Labour Party, yet statistically impossible numbers dominate trade union hierarchies.
In polite company, people put their own house in order before telling others how to run their affairs. Trade unions are no exception, but would run a mile from an independent equal opportunities based audit of their employment practices.
Mark A. Irvine
April 2001
