A council’s decision to ban white graduates from applying for an £18,000-a-year management training scheme in order to boost staff diversity ratios has caused outrage.
The initiative by Bristol City Council, which offers two candidates a two-year placement with the local authority, is only open to people from black or ethnic minority backgrounds. The scheme, which is advertised on its web site, states simply ‘Open to Black and minority ethnic graduates’.
Officials said that the Race Relations Act 1976 allowed for public authorities to offer training to specific groups of people if they were under-represented.
James Easey, a spokesman for Bristol, told the Daily Telegraph: “This is the third year of running the traineeship and it was started because of the marked under-representation of ethnic minority people in the council’s workforce.”
The normal recruitment process was not rectifying “this unacceptably low trend”, which meant there was a “strong case for this small positive recruitment traineeship”, he added.
“Graduates from any ethic background are open to apply for the national graduate local government programme, which we recruit from every year – we have just recruited two graduates in this way,” Easey said.
The local authority employs 9,000 workers, of which 8,370 are white and 630 or 7% are from ethnic minorities. Some 12% of Bristol residents come from minority backgrounds, however.
But one white jobseeker, who asked not to be named, said the move was “totally racist” and would have been “an excellent opportunity for me to make use of the skills and qualifications that I’ve acquired”.
“But by being white, I’m excluded from applying for the post. Surely equal opportunities means giving everyone an equal chance to succeed rather than discriminating against people because of the colour of their skin,” he added.
Kylie Coulter, Solicitor for Thomas Eggar LLP, commented on the story for HRzone: "Debates about positive discrimination have recently been re-opened following reports that Bristol City Council has published an advert on its website for trainee managers stating that the posts are "open to black and minority ethnic graduates'. Many white graduates understandably feel that this sort of advert amounts to race discrimination against them and presents a further barrier to them entering an already overcrowded job market.
She explains: "The Race Relations Act 1976 ("RRA") outlaws the vast majority of race discrimination in all areas of employment, including recruitment, terms and conditions, promotions, transfers, dismissals and training. Positive discrimination is not generally permitted, as by its very nature it involves a form of discrimination.
"However, there are very limited exceptions where positive discrimination is permitted under the RRA, for example discriminatory access to training and discriminatory recruitment campaigns are permitted in narrow circumstances. To rely on these exceptions, the employer will need to show that certain conditions have been satisfied, for example that the racial group is under-represented in the work in question. This is the line of defence Bristol City Council will no doubt run if they face claims in relation to the advert in question.
"What positive action does not currently extend to is allowing employers to discriminate in their actual selection of a candidate. But watch this space - the Equality Act 2010 currently contains provisions extending the ambit of positive discrimination to allow an employer to take under-represented groups into account when selecting between two equally qualified candidates at the recruitment or promotion stage. Naturally, this is going to lead to disputes about whether two candidates are in fact 'equally qualified' given the slim chances of ever finding two identically qualified candidates. How extensively this defence will operate in the future is therefore currently unclear.
Kylie advises: "For the moment however, if you think you might be able to rely on the positive discrimination defence the message is to seek advice before publishing the advert!"
