INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

For a definition of institutional racism and how to tackle it please click here for a link to the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) web site.

UCL UNISON requested that an investigation be made into whether Institutional Racism existed within the Security Department at UCL in 2000. UCL eventually agreed an investigation. The process prompted UCL Branch and its black members group to submit motions to both the HE UNISON national conference 2002 and the UNISON Black Members Conference 2002, detailing its experiences and the lessons it thought could be learned. This motion was passed in both instances. A summary of events since that time can viewed in a letter to the UNISON Black Members National Committee in May 2003:-

23 May 2003

Dear Adolphus

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM- UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

In response to your e-mail about the above, UCL UNISON raised some concerns with UCL about practices in the Security department. The chronology of what took place is as follows:-

1. UCL intended to change contracts and recruit more staff into UCL Security Dept in 1999-2000. UCL UNISON requested that when recrutiment was undertaken UCL take into account that out of 36 existing staff there was only 2 from ethnic minorities.

2. UCL recruited over 20 new staff over half of whom were from ethnic minorities

3. Then what occurred was a number of disciplinaries against the staff from ethnic minorities as well as a number of grievances.

4. Some of these grievances were against white UNISON members and white UNISON shop stewards.

5. UCL UNISON asserted that Institutional Racism existed in this department which was sytematic of the whole of UCL and requested an investigation into this by UCL in conjunction with UNISON.

6. UCL were reluctant to undertake such an investigation but eventually agreed on the condition that UNISON were not part of the panel nor be able to see the end report. UCL UNISON were understandably aggrieved by this but co-operated with the investigation as much as possible making their own representations to the panel, which was chaired by an outside consultant.

7. The investigation determined that Institutional Racism did exist in certain areas and made 67 recommendations. Many of these involved improving management structure, training, awareness, monitoring and changing operational activities so as to ensure equality of actions. This included issues like who does patrols, overtime, and staffing rotas. We still have never seen the full report.

8. UCL UNISON tried to widen this investigation further into the whole of UCL but the employer was resistant to doing this. UCL did agree however to include a definition of "Institutional Racism" within their Race Equality Policy.

9. UCL UNISON encountered a lot of hostility amongst our white members in Security and in other sections because of our stand on "institutional Racism" we were accused several times of favouring members from ethnic minorities. We tried to counter this as best we could but did lose a handful of members as a result.

10. UCL UNISON perceives that Institutional Racism is widespread at UCL but feel that it is probably not unusual in this regard. We continue to have members from ethnic minorities in the Security Department making complaints and the issue has still not been fully resolved. Many of the new staff recruited to UCL from ethnic minorities have either been sacked or left UCL.

11. UCL UNISON perceives that UNISON does not fully understand some of the problems encountered when tackling this issue. UCL UNISON Branch made representations to the employer without any involvement from Regional Office. We requested some help from National Office and Mr Sullivan from the National Black Members Committee came down for about an hour. We were left in the main to our own devices and in hindsight I think we could have approached this differently. This is the reason for raising this at the Black Members conference in an effort to raise the profile of some of the problems that we encountered.

I've got loads of correspondence pertaining to this issue and can forward these to you if you are interested.

Hope this is of some help.

Yours sincerely,

TOM SILVERLOCK
BRANCH SECRETARY
UCL UNISON

UCL UNISON has a Black Members Group:- click here

UNISON has a National Black Members Committee:- click here