Police force admits rejecting white men

[graham enzk]

Force admits rejecting white men
A police force has admitted illegally rejecting 108 potential recruits because they were white men.

In an attempt to boost its number of ethnic and women recruits, Gloucestershire Police "randomly deselected" the 108 white men, a tribunal heard.

But one of the rejected men, Matt Powell, 30, from Gloucester, took action against the force, taking it to the tribunal on the grounds he had been discriminated against, according to newspaper reports.

On Thursday, the force was ordered to pay £2,500 compensation to Mr Powell.

Mr Powell said: "I firmly believe a wrong has been done here. I was, I still am, desperate to be a police officer and they have unfairly discriminated against me."

The case comes six months after Avon and Somerset Police admitted they had illegally rejected almost 200 applications from white men for the same reason, and the Police Federation of England and Wales, which represents police officers, fears more forces could be doing the same.

Gordon Ramsey, head of human resources at Gloucestershire Police, told the hearing: "We were trying to advance diversity in the force and we thought at the time that this was a lawful, positive action.

"When we found out, after an independent investigation, that it wasn't lawful, we accepted that.

"We apologise for the distress caused to Mr Powell and the other candidates."

The tribunal's chairman, Clive Toomer, said Mr Powell was awarded the compensation for "injury to feelings".



© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved.



i always thought putting myself down as an ethnic minority in those equal opportunity parts of job application forms would help to get to the interview stage.
i was once tempted to put in identical applications to a job but on one have me as white straight fit and able male and the other as ethnic minority disabled lesbian and see which one was more succesful.

[humndislocation]

Positive discrimination is an oxymoron in my opinion. It just plays right into the hands of BNP idiots. When your average Joe Sun reader hears about stuff like this, it makes it far easier to manipulate him into thinking that the BNP "aren't racist, and aren't that bad after all".

The most skilled person should be the one to get the job. Can't really complain though, given that the article says that this is illegal anyway.

It might just be the industry I'm in, but personanlly I've never felt discriminated against in any way. In my experience of working, the best person for the job (as much as can be ascertained in the interview), is the one that gets it.

[graham enzk]

where i work there was a training scheme to fast track people for middle and upper management.
you had to be an ethnic minority to qualify for it.
all about addressing the imbalance of ethnic minorities in the management structure they said.
i say they're called ethnic minorities for a reason. there's less of them.
so it stands to reason that there will be less of them in any particular job role. seeing as there are less job roles the higher you go then it would not be out of the ordinary for there to be no ethnic minorities at certain levels. say 1 in 10 people in the country are from an ethnic minority, then say at a certain level of a business there are 4 managers, the likelyhood of them all being white is quite high as there would be 9 white to every 1 ethnic minority going for the job. at a level where there are 10 posts you could well expect there to be an ethnic minority employed statistcly speaking on very basic terms (i.e. not accounting for the type of job and the desirability of that job to certain people)
i don't think it should ever be forced to conform to a statistic though like companies looking at there workforce and saying hang on we need more black people here to satisfy our diversity target better hire a couple.
there is also a time element involved as well. i know ethnic minorities were discriminated against but the statistical balance will not just happen overnight. looking at the age of the senior management here they are all over 50 at least and probably near 60 and been employed for many years having worked there way up. now if there had been discrimination againt minorities in the workplace upto any point after the current managers began their careers then minorities that started after the discrimination ended would be more likely to be below them.
there are no young senior management. is this viewed as discrimination? no it's just viewed that it takes a fair while to rise through the company. people above have to leave to create the vacancy.
there are more women working here than men. is it viewed as discrimination? no, because nobody gives a shit.
going back to the 1 in 10 and the 4 job roles, if all 4 job roles were filled by ethnic minorities would people think it was odd?
statisticly it would look odd but so what.

i have a feeling i'm rambling, but maybe i made a point in there somewhere, i don't know.

i just found this statistic on our Ethnic Minority Employment Taskforce website:
One in 10 working age people in Great Britain are of an ethnic minority background.
and:
45% of the ethnic minority population is under 25 years old, compared with only 29% per cent of white people.

so yeah statistacly the old white people are more likely to be in upper management seeing as all the upper management is over 25.

[graham enzk]

a higher percentage of the white population is employed than the ethnic minority population though.

76% of white people are employed compared with only 60% of ethnic minorities.
Bangladeshi women have the lowest employment rate of all groups, with just 24% being employed.
About a quarter of ethnic minorities are employed in the distribution or hotel and restaurants industry sectors compared with under a fifth of white people.
Nearly half of employed people from Chinese backgrounds work in the distribution or hotel and restaurant industry sectors.

i'm sure these stats can be spun to mean anything though especially when they are kinda vague.
this higher amount work in this sector sound like it's menial jobs, but then again they make be the owners, who knows?
is the lower ratio of employment due to wifes that don't work due to religion/culture? only 24% bangladeshi women work. sounds bad. but how many are looking to work?

here's the website: http://www.emetaskforce.gov.uk/index.asp

[The Pumpkin]

have to agree with the points you made there!

i may sound ignorant here but i thought 'positive discrimination' was a thing of the recent past, i was clearly wrong! Its a sad fact that being 'ethnic' is still an issue at all in this country