Don't get old,don't be a woman and don't be black - Blair McPherson

The public sector used to lead the way when it came to promoting equal opportunities. We introduced polices, strategies and targets in relation to recruitment and service delivery. We aimed to be a model employer. It was a work in progress. The policies, strategies and targets are still there but have been over taken by financial austerity and privatisation.

Revised application forms, gender balanced interview panels and recruitment targets are irrelevant when the organisation is shedding large numbers of staff at every level. The aim of having a workforce that reflects the ethnic makeup of the local population is severely undermined when your ethnic minority staff were disproportionately employed in the services you have reduced, out sourced or closed. These are the local authority staff who worked in large numbers in day centres, residential homes, home help services, libraries and admin. All these services had career structures, training opportunities and paid above the minimum wage. All these services were traditionally dominated by women.

As more services are contracted out to the private the public sector will not be able to determine what staff are paid, who is employed or whether their employer recognises a trade union. They will certainly not be able to impose equal opportunity recruitment targets, trainee schemes for unemployed graduates or workplace experience for people with a learning disability. Public sector organisations contracting out work will not be able to force private sector employers to adopt national pay scales or publish what people doing the same job are paid so information on the pay gap between women and men will be harder to obtain.  I think we can guess in which direction it will go!

If the equal opportunity recruitment agenda for the public sector has changed so has the agenda for service delivery. Previously social services had take up targets for minority ethnic groups to tackle the fact that older people and people with learning disabilities were under represented as consumers of services. Older people are the biggest user of social services, account for the largest section of the budget and have been the group to provide the most savings. It’s not just that fees to residential homes have been frozen, grants to voluntary groups withdrawn, meals on wheels services reduced, local authority homes closed and home support time limited but the eligibility criteria for receiving help has been raised, tightened to exclude all but the most dependant and vulnerable. The ethnic minority population is younger than the majority population so as they become frailer and eligible for help they have see the bar raised to exclude them yet again. To be black and elderly you are doubly disadvantaged and where as the voluntary and community groups may have stepped in the past to run a Caribbean luncheon club or a Muslim day centre cuts to grants make it harder for this services to keep going. 

Local authorities have a legal duty to consider the equal opportunity impact of budget cuts and service reductions. But if you are making staff redundant rather than recruiting new staff, reducing services rather than increasing service, narrowing down who can receive help rather than broadening it out, them all you can do is be honest and acknowledge the negative impact in particular on race, age and gender.

Blair McPherson author of An Elephant in the Room about delivering equality and diversity in the public sector published by Russell House www.blairmcpherson.co.uk