Tackling racism in the workplace is becoming increasingly urgent, despite two years of campaigning on the issue, the Chief Executive of the Equality Authority has said.
Mr Niall Crowley, speaking at the beginning of the second annual Anti-Racist Workplace Week, said more than 20 per cent of the authority's caseload, under the Employment Equality Act, involved alleged discrimination against black and ethnic minority groups.
"This reflects a significant growth and is the second highest area of casework after the gender ground."
The issues raised include access to employment, working conditions, harassment, dismissal and equal pay.
The Anti-Racism Workplace Week intends to act as an opportunity for staff, management and unions to focus attention on racism, to think about and challenge racism, within the workplace, said Mr Crowley.
Supporting the Week, Mr Joe McDonagh, chairman of the Steering Committee for the national anti-racism awareness programme, Know Racism, said it was vital that racism in the workplace be challenged if the "serious and growing problem" was to be tackled in the wider society.
SIPTU said it planned to draw attention to the exploitation of non-national workers, during the Week.
"We have documented examples of contract cleaners who have been forced to work for less than the legal statutory minimum wage of £5.41 an hour, who have been refused any overtime pay for work done after hours and who have been threatened with eviction from their homes and being sacked from their jobs for objecting to such practices," a spokeswoman, Ms Barbera Kelly, said.
The initiative is also supported by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, IBEC and the Construction Industry Federation.
Mr Turlough O'Sullivan, director general of IBEC, stressed the importance of the role of employers in ensuring that racism did not take hold in the Irish workplace. "The focus on training and practical responses that employers can take is a welcome theme," he said of the Week.
Mr Crowley said there had "great response" from employers and unions. "The point is that the workplace is like a microcosm of wider society. Tackling racism is itself vital because racism, for people who are victims of it, places them in a situation where they have poor employment prospects, poor health, poor quality of life, purely because of their race or the colour of their skin."
Further information available from the Equality Authority on (01) 417 3333.
