UNISON’s Anti-Racism Charter is more than just a document with ideas on how to challenge workplace racial discrimination, it is constant commitment to transform public-service employers into explicitly anti-racist institutions.
This page has a whole host of resources to help you get your employer to sign the charter and — more importantly — to make sure they’re turning their commitment into action.
Anti-Racism Charter
Our organisation pledges we will introduce the following ongoing commitments within 12 months of signing:
Our leaders will
- Recognise the need and benefit in championing a racially diverse workforce.
- Challenge racism internally and externally wherever it arises in relation to the organisation.
- Recognise the impact of racism upon staff members’ wellbeing.
- Set and regularly review strategy to improve racial equality, diversity and inclusion so that the organisation reflects the communities it serves.
Our organisation will
- Have a clear and visible race equality policy championed by leadership.
- Have a clear and visible anti-racism programme of initiatives and actions.
- Undertake equality impact assessments for all strategic-level decisions.
- Undertake ethnicity pay gap recording and publicly publish results.
- Undertake workforce ethnicity recording and publicly publish results.
- Provide unconscious bias and anti-racism training for all staff members.
- Provide a racism reporting process for notifying, investigating and recording outcomes.
- Provide robust equality training for managers involved in recruiting, promotions and investigating allegations.
- Provide a wellbeing support facility for staff experiencing racism in the workplace.
- Will be anti-racist, not just non-racist in all we do.
Our equality auditing process will review
- Recruitment processes to identify and address race disparities in equality of opportunity.
- Exit interview results to identify and address race disparities in retention of staff members.
- Promotional processes to identify and address race disparities in equality of opportunity.
- Discipline and grievance to identify and address race disparity in outcomes of comparable cases.
- Policies and research under a duty or commitment to promote solidarity and tackle racism.
- Our mission, values, and support to removing racial discrimination in all its forms.
Sharing best practice
On Monday 14 August, we held a lunchtime webinar for members, activists and employers to share how the Anti-Racism Charter is helping to transform workplaces.
Check it out above.
You can see a copy of Cambridgeshire County Council’s Preventing Aggression and Violence at Work policy here.
Resources
You can download a PDF of the charter with space for your employer to sign it and proudly display in the workplace. If you need a copy tailored to your employer, please speak to your regional organiser.
Signing the charter is just one step, it’s important that your colleagues know about it. This poster can be put around your workplace or held up for a photo opportunity when you’re doing work around the charter.
Get your colleagues and managers involved on a personal level as well as an organisational one, ask them to sign this anti-racist ally pledge card. You can print it out professionally or ask them to sign online.
We’ve produced a Powerpoint presentation that branches and activists can use to present to their employers or to branch meetings.
Once you or your employer has signed up, it’s important to keep track of progress. You can use our template action tracker to stay on top of things.
Cambridgeshire County Council has helpfully dedicated a webpage to the charter, including its tracker, so members of the public can see what progress is being made.
Year of Black Workers
This is UNISON’s Year of Black Workers, our chance to celebrate the union’s long history of campaigning against racial discrimination and plan future action to challenge racism in the workplace and society as a whole.
UNISON’s national Black workers group has produced an anti-racism toolkit to help plan activity for 2023 and the years ahead.
