This has been a tremendously difficult year for everyone but none more so than those of us who have lost family, friends or livelihoods to the Covid19 virus. There is no doubt that Black Asian and Minority Ethnic workers have been disproportionately affected in almost every sector of employment and in their thousands have died or been infected needlessly. We know there has
This has been a tremendously difficult year for everyone but none more so than those of us who have lost family, friends or livelihoods to the Covid19 virus. There is no doubt that Black Asian and Minority Ethnic workers have been disproportionately affected in almost every sector of employment and in their thousands have died or been infected needlessly. We know there has been a massive failure by Government and employers to protect us with proper Covid safety measures but on top of this scandal is the tragedy of the further uncovering and exposure of the structural and institutional racism that is embedded within our society.
Whether it be the Windrush scandal, the Grenfell disaster, racist assaults in sports through social media or the murder of George Floyd we have been bombarded with the reality that racism is not just alive and kicking, its alive and killing in plain sight. There is no escaping the fact that institutional racism has always held us back and still is! Racism didn’t do us any favours in this Covid pandemic as inequality in the workplace inevitably left us vulnerable. The sad truth is that regardless of the pandemic most of us know we are not fulfilling our true potential at work because we are denied the opportunity to. We know we have to eradicate racism. We know the serious challenges we face at work and in our communities to overcome the cultures that allow racism to thrive, to hide and to hurt because we have lived and experienced it. We know that we can only succeed by working together to make a lasting difference for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic workers wherever we work or live.
This is why our region is committed to developing a Regional Race Network to focus on how we best support our members who fall within our Race Strand, and develop events, initiatives and campaigns to tackle racism and the issues that affect them most.
To mark the anniversary of George Floyd’s brutal murder the region will be supporting TUC local events see here and in particular on 27th May at 12pm -2pm we will be holding an online event “Race in the Workplace” to launch our Regional Race Network. The event will include key speakers and is your chance to let us know how we can build a better future at work together. So much depends on not just what we say, but on what we do right now!
So please register for the event and fill out our survey which will help us to formulate the Regional Race Network’s next steps.
