ITS OFFICIAL: IF YOU HAVE AN ETHNIC SOUNDING NAME YOU ARE LESS LIKELY TO GET CALLED FOR A JOB INTERVIEW.
Posted by Roger Godsiff, MP for Birmingham, Hall Green, at 16:46, Sun 30 September 2012:
Roger Godsiff MP calls for blind sifting for all job interviews, racist bias cannot be ignored
Mr Godsiff said: "This damning evidence comes from a recent report by the Department for Work and Pensions itself which shows that white names are 74% more likely to get called for an interview following the job application than candidates with an ethnic minority name, despite the two candidates having exactly the same qualifications”.
This report, “A test for racial discrimination in recruitment practice in British cities", involved submitting job applications for fictional white and ethnic minority applicants with equivalent qualifications for advertised vacancies across Britain in order to determine the extent of racial discrimination in the labour market.
Mr Godsiff went on to say: "This report revealed that a high level of racial discrimination existed across the board, with ethnic minority candidates having to submit nearly twice as many job applications as white candidates to achieve the same level of success, discrimination is noticeably higher for males.
The talents and abilities of young people from the ethnic minority communities are being wasted and ultimately this will have a hugely negative impact on social cohesion”.
Mr Godsiff has joined many other MP’s in calling for a level playing field in the recruitment market and that the government should take the lead on this by imposing blind sifting for job applications in all Civil Service, governmental departments and public sector organisations.
Mr Godsiff went further than this when he said that: "I would introduce legislation in the next Queens Speech which would make it legally binding even in the private sector for blind sifting for the job applications to take place, with severe financial penalties for those companies who fail to meet these standards.”
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that unemployment rates among black and Pakistani Londoners aged 16 – 24 reached levels of 44%, more than double the 19% jobless rate of young whites. For black men the unemployment rate rises even higher, to 55.5%, according to the Runnymede Trust, which reports this figure has almost doubled since 2008. This figures are by and large replicated around the country.
A report this week by MPs on the Work and Pensions Committee concluded that "action is required to address disproportionately high youth unemployment rates among some minority ethnic groups, in particular young black men" and that the government Youth Contract is "Inadequate and insufficient" to address this.
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Posted by Paul Holloway, 19:28, Sun 30 September 2012: (Is this post abusive?) #
Good luck with that. This is a problem that ought to be tackled, but I have to question whether the proposed solution would be effective. If you are successful in preventing recruiters from discriminating at the pre-interview stage, you still have to prevent them discriminating at the post-interview stage. That, I feel, will be a far trickier thing to tackle.
Posted by Mohammed Hemraj, 12:44, Mon 1 October 2012: (Is this post abusive?) #
I appreciate the reseach conducted by Roger and he needs to do more reseach and inform us on: How many Black MPs are there and how many of them are Muslims? How many Blacks are there in the UK companies as Directors? How many Black UK citizens are pursuing their degree courses in the top 10 UK universities? How many UK Banks are lending to Black men and women who have started their own businesses? I can go on and on.