Tag Archives: Institutional racism

TUPE TRANSFER WATCH #2: IS IT RACIST?

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HR meeting
The great white masters decide the fate of the black workers

The transfer of Bristol City Council’s lowest paid staff in security and cleaning to Bristol Waste to save the authority a few quid and prop up their cash-strapped waste company looks racist.

 One thing left unexplored by the council’s HR Committee last Thursday was the fact that, at least, 34 per cent of the staff involved are black and many have English as a second language. Although that’s not the full picture as ethnic data on this section of the council’s workforce is incomplete.

 Many observers see this as a text book case of institutional racism as well-paid white male bosses assure councillors that these voiceless staff are happy to be transferred over to Bristol Waste on poorer terms and conditions than the ones the bosses will continue to enjoy.

 Director of Workforce John “Bedwetter” Walsh – who gets by on £122,475 a year plus £20,835 pension contributions – didn’t mention to the HR meeting the make-up of this section of his workforce. Was he embarrassed to admit that he’s forcing one of the lowest paid sections of his workforce with one of the highest numbers of black employees on to second class terms and conditions?

 An Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA) has been produced for a Cabinet meeting on Thursday and it confirms that 34 per cent of this workforce is black as well as showing that data on ethnicity for this section of the workforce is incomplete. The assessment also contains plenty of weasel words that try to excuse management.

 For example, it claims any ‘potentially adverse impacts on people with protected characteristics’ are ‘indirect’. As if poorer terms and conditions do not directly affect those concerned? The EqIA also claims, ‘contractual terms and conditions (including pay and pension) are protected in law, and it would be unlawful for the new employer to seek to change these for any reason connected with the transfer.’

 Then comes the caveat, ‘unless they have a justifiable Economic, Technological or Organisational Reason for doing so’. In other words, Bristol Waste have loopholes on hand to set about attacking these workers’ terms and conditions from the day one.

 The assessment also explains that ‘Non-contractual elements – such as HR policies – would change to those of the new employer, which may be more or less generous than those currently in place’. Why so coy over whether these conditions are more or less generous? The council know. It’s a simple exercise for HR bosses to read Bristol Waste’s HR policies and compare them to their own. Why hasn’t this been done?

 On the question of whether these workers’ existing HR terms and conditions will be protected, we’re told ‘BCC and BWC may secure greater protection of noncontractual terms, subject to this being affordable within the overall business case for the proposal’. In other words, terms and conditions will be traded away on the basis of a mysterious business case that hasn’t been published.

 Last year the council published a worthy ‘Transforming race and equality at BCC’ document to help them tackle their ongoing problems with institutional racism. The report’s recommendations under the heading  ‘Corporate Leadership’ addressing Equality Impact Assessments say, ‘In the event of there being likely disproportionalities in relation to BAME staff, a corporately agreed mechanism should be established to explore the reasons; and to determine whether there may be ways of mitigating against this.’

So where’s Bedwetter’s corporately agreed mechanism exploring the reasons why black staff are being disproportionately affected by an outsourcing plan that’s attempting to save a few quid at the expense of workers’ dignity?

WEST WING WATCH

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west wing ii

Efforts by the Reverend Rees and his point man ‘Slo’ Kevin Slocombe to create their own new season of THE WEST WING up on the third floor of the Counts Louse brings predictable results.

Having EXPANDED the Mayoral Office budget to the best part of £1MILLION A YEAR and styled themselves as fast talking power dressing power players who get things done, their efforts to slickly command and control a council of 7,000 employees SPENDING A BUDGET OF A BILLION is more Jedward than Jed Bartlet.

The latest MAYORAL FAILURE finds the Reverend unable to get a simple ‘corrective’ brass plaque attached to the statue of Colston in the Centre. This might be because following the original mayoral decree for a plaque, there was NO MEANS to communicate back to the Mayor or his team what was going on with a project easily highjacked by the Merchant Venturers from council officers.

Similar problems have haunted the Reverend’s response to institutional racism at the council where the HR officers and managers responsible for the problem have filled any MANAGEMENT VACUUM by stepping in to solve their own problem to suit themselves.

The most recent fiasco followed the removal of valuable 1930s street lamps from south Bristol to leafy Stoke Bishop. “THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN,” insisted Slo Kev on Twitter. “Any street lamps removed are used for spare parts only,” he explained. Alas, within minutes of Slo Kev’s claim, a photo appeared on Twitter of a newly installed street lamp from south Bristol in Stoke Bishop!

The obvious solution of appointing one of 40-odd Labour councillors to oversee something like the plaque project through to completion has been OVERLOOKED by both the Reverend and Slo Kev. Both naively believing they can achieve anything at the council, no matter how minor, by SWAGGERING COMMAND or LENGTHY PRESS RELEASE fired out from the third floor executive suite.

In reality simple projects are FAILING and poor decisions are MULTIPLYING due to the Reverend’s West Wing fantasy. There’s a bottleneck at the top of the council. Too many issues for too few mayoral staff to cope with and council officers end up running the show with little oversight. Labour councillors, meanwhile, the natural workforce to force Labour policy through a recalcitrant council, hang about IDLE, BORED and IGNORED.

When will the Reverend figure out how to run his council?

ST MARVIN’S PARISH NEWS #19

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You may have read in the local newspapers that the scourge of institutional racism is stalking the pews of St Marvin’s. The first thing to understand about all this is that none of this is my fault. Neither is it the fault of the executive head of the Parish Committee, the entirely non-racist Mr Jackson, or any other of my highly competent and equalities-positive senior leaders of our inclusive church project. This is a fact confirmed in a secret report you don’t need to see that I commissioned from my friend, The Very Reverend Holy Poonami

This has all been explained to Mr Norton, the editor of the St Marvin’s Post and one of our parish’s outstanding social liberals and anti-racists who assures me he has a lot of black friends. He now firmly agrees with myself and the Holy Poonami that the blame for all this racism at St Marvin’s lies firmly within the congregation, especially among those occupying the middle pews on Sundays. And rest assured, our inclusive parish leadership team are fully dedicated to efficiently shifting the blame for this problem on to these people as quickly as possible now that the newspapers have found out.

Further strategic responses you can expect from a wholly innocent and unaware inclusive parish leadership team will be an ongoing commitment to building a diverse parish by repeating language such as ‘inclusive’, ‘diverse’ and ‘outward looking’ as much as possible. This should allow inclusive parish leaders to continue to flourish despite acutely embarrassing accusations from the media.

In partnership with Mr Jackson and the senior parish leadership team, I will also continue to regularly publish waffle about our organisational values; ramble on about a parish journey of continuous improvement and, naturally, improve the robustness of our all-important equality impact assessments that nobody ever looks at.

You will also be excited to hear that the inclusive leadership team will ensure that the next Parish survey – due out soon – includes a section dedicated to you better understanding our outward-looking parish culture and religious environment. This will specifically address issues of fairness, equality, inclusion and diversity that many parishioners are struggling to spout as professionally as our inclusive parish leaders can.

Alongside our mission to place the blame elsewhere, I’m sure you will agree this is a hugely robust response from your inclusive parish leadership team. As my mentor the Texan psychotic preacher and notorious anti-communist homophobe, the Pastor Righteous Loon says in his new ‘Book of Loon’, “When caught red-handed, profess thy undying innocence, buy in a report and blame those who can’t answer back”.

Finally a small word about these so-called “whistleblowers” who spoke to the press. In future can anyone identifying as a “whistleblower” contact the inclusive parish leadership team immediately? We are all extremely skilled in managing these problems in line with our inclusive parish leadership goals and, often, our inclusive goals conflict with the goals of the ungodly free press. Please note that “whistleblowers” who fail to comply with this simple instruction may come to regret it.

Hopefully, with such a robust inclusive leadership response now in place, the parish can move swiftly along and not dwell on this overblown media confection for too much longer.

The Vicar

MAYOR GETTING RACY

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MAYOR GETTING RACY

The Reverend rushed to the airwaves and into print within days of the Nazi Post revealing last month, with the help of four whistleblowers, that his council had miserably failed to take any action over 70 INSTANCES OF RACISM among their workforce over the last ten years.

The Reverend’s first port of call was a soft interview with Ellie “Copy Typist” Pipe, roving reporter for Venue-lite website and mag, Bristol 24/7. The Reverend’s crazed mission to EXPLAIN THE INEXPLICABLE appeared on the 24/7 website on Friday 22 February.

The first target from the failed journalist and failing mayor was successful journalism. “There is a massive challenge for the journalistic class in the city as well,” bleated the Reverend, taking aim at those who had recorded, for the public, his latest embarrassing ORGANISATIONAL FAILURE.

The Vicar went on to claim the press were “sensationalising” the issue as the four cases reported in the Post “were being addressed” by his senior bosses. Sidestepping the fact that the whistleblowers had gone to the Post because their cases remained UNADDRESSED while the perpetrators and the senior bosses protecting them remained UNCHALLENGED.

“We, as a leadership, have always taken race and racism very seriously,” Rees breezily assured 24/7 readers. “We have put in place a whole raft of measures to tackle it”. And what measures would they be? Er, we don’t know because the Reverend didn’t say and Copy Typist Pipe DIDN’T BOTHER TO ASK. So that’s all right, then.

The Reverend immediately followed this highly DEFENSIVE INTERVIEW with an appearance among friends at community radio station, Ujima where he was joined by a cheerleader from the local race relations industry, Sado Jirde of the Black South West Network.

Together, the pair spent an hour patronising listeners by batting about long-winded undergraduate seminar observations about race with little reference to the Reverend’s working class black staff  experiencing THE SHARP END OF RACISM right here, right now in Bristol.

It’s all ever so “complex and systemic” listeners were assured as the pair ASSERTED that due to the way racism was “reproduced and remodelled in institutions” it had to be “contextualised”.

Was this because the context of black working class people having their experience of racism BELITTLED AND IGNORED by middle class public sector bosses with large mortgages to service and quiet lives to live was a little too raw and direct for them?

Further highlights at Ujima included Rees whining that he couldn’t be expected to resolve 400 years of racism. Or, it seems, even four straightforward issues of RACISM within his own organisation raised that week by WHISTLEBLOWERS in the press.

The Reverend also went right off the deep end at the Nazi Post. “We all knew about it anyway”; they were “behind the conversation” on race; they were “role playing at being investigative journalists”; they had a “shallow understanding”; they were using “shock terminology” based on “inaccuracies and embellishments” and the headlines “were a great splash but not true,” the Reverend variously BLUSTERED at listeners.

To polish off this hour of PARANOID WAFFLE and EMBITTERED DENIAL, the show’s presenter even chipped in telling listeners that “whistleblower” is the “wrong terminology”. So what is the correct terminology for what this little lot were up to then?

How about “another bloody hatchet job by council bosses and client media on working class whistleblowers”?