A picture of a monkey on a staffroom notice board, baseless allegations of assault, and disciplinary action for standing up to an abusive shoplifter are among the incidents of racism against migrant workers highlighted at a trade union conference.
Workers are having to endure worsening levels of racial abuse and discrimination in the workplace, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) event was told by consultant on equality and integration, Dr Lucy Michael, with employers, colleagues or members of the public variously responsible for the abuse and unions often struggling to provide the support required on the issue.
Dr Michael was delivering the preliminary results of research interviews with workers across Ireland who come from other parts of Europe and further afield.
She said the engagements had yielded accounts of “extraordinarily traumatic experiences”, the impact of which could be heightened where the people targeted were already encountering racism outside of the workplace.
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“One of the reasons workplaces can be so good for the integration of migrants is that you’re together all day,” she said. “You’re together on a long shift, you work hard together, you rise to challenges, you solve problems together.
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“But the workplace can be a really difficult place in terms of harassment and bullying because you’re there for so long, you’re there every day, you don’t have a choice. You’ve got to take your wages home. And so people are very vulnerable to exploitation.”
She said protections against discrimination by employers had been weakened in the wake of the financial crash, and the bar for proving cases at the Workplace Relations Commission is set so high as to act as a deterrent.
Failure to engage with the issue was not limited to the private sector, Dr Michael said, pointing to the recent admission by the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform that a number of staff training sessions run by the Institute of Public Administration on its behalf in relation to managing for an inclusive workforce and authentic, inspiring and inclusive leadership had had to be cancelled due to lack of uptake.
The experiences of workers affected, meanwhile, are worsening due to the growing levels of disinformation being spread online, Dr Michael said.
“Trade unions have done a huge amount of work over the years telling workers about what their rights are,” she said. “It’s a real strength of the trade union movement. But what we are trying to understand is when somebody goes to the trade union and says they are experiencing racial discrimination, what kind of support do they get?”
In many instances the feedback is positive, but it is inconsistent, with some unions better than others when it comes to training and communication in the area and a perception that people from minority ethnic groups are underrepresented among officials and activists.
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“Migrant workers need to have trust in reporting mechanisms so that they will be heard and that workers who experience racial discrimination can be effectively supported by union representatives,” said Gordon Ogutu, another of the report’s authors. “Union reps need to understand employment and equality laws, so that they can identify incidents of racial discrimination.”
Ictu general secretary Owen Reidy said racism had “no place in any reputable workplace”, and the response of individual unions to campaigns on the issue was “a real testament to the movement’s intolerance of bigotry of any kind”.
Ictu has published a “toolkit” intended to help union representatives work towards more inclusive workplaces.
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