BAME staff

[Pomegranatepompom]

Which professions are currently asking BAME staff to shield/WFH?

We are not currently in the NHS trust I work in (London) - probably because we'd have to close services. I do wonder if we should have special measures in place and I'd like to raise this point next week in our hospital zoom meeting. Apparently everyone is going to have a risk assessment but it's taking a while ...
Interested in what other professions are doing.

I know there are lots of differences with shielding depending what hospital you work in. Currently people with asthma are working (unless severe) and people can choose to work clinical or WFH if pregnant. Clinical staff who can't go home due to vulnerable household members, are living away from home or if admin, are WFH.

BAME isn't a shield category - the exceptionally medically vulnerable are defined by a short list of the most serious conditions (eg not all cancers are included), and it's not by age either

So this is really a question about what to do with the medically vulnerable (flu jab group plus BAME) and the immediate household members of those who are shielding. That's a lot of people. But everyone should have a safe workplace. Just as everyone should be able to access services safely.

At the moment, it's very much up to individual organisations (with the only universal provision being that no one can compel a shielded person to attend a workplace). Best practice is evolving, as organisations at freach other (and international companies learn from practices in other countries and nick the best bits)

I hope that organisations will prioritise the medically vulnerable for WFH in the short term at least (if they need only some of the workforce on site).

In theory you might want to put a risk threshold matrix in force by age, sex and “race” (messy enough term anyway). So for example you’d exclude white women over 60 from the workplace, white men over 50, and men and women of other ethnicities would have different, lower age cutoffs.

From a raw H&S POV that has a kind of logic, but it’s an ethical and optics minefield. For one thing we still don’t definitively know whether (say) a male 30 year old Bangladeshi maths teacher with a healthy BMI and no diabetes is intrinsically more vulnerable than a white man of the same age doing the same job. And for another a lot of firms will be making redundancies once the furlough scheme expires, or possibly rewarding and promoting the staff who’ve worked hard picking up the slack in difficult times. Obviously staff who are not given the opportunity to come in and demonstrate those qualities would have valid cause for complaint (I’m not talking about firms where everyone can do the job equally well from home). Teaching, where there’s currently lots to be done from home, and no redundancies expected is one of the simplest industries.

My worry as far as BAME and susceptibility to COVID is might employers start to discriminate against BAME applicants further for fear of sickness, reluctance to allow wfh or the cost of complying with whatever is needed to reduce risk to BAME staff? will this be another sledgehammer with which to deny them employment?

One of my siblings works as a GP receptionist and another sibling is a hospital pharmacist, both BAME, both had risk assessments. Both deemed low risk so no issues with their current roles (young, healthy BMI, one has mild asthma). The one who works for a GP practice has been asked to have a blood test to check vit D too which is interesting. They're both happy with they way it's been handled but neither are in otherwise higher risk categories really (the data now suggests mild asthma is not any additional risk whatsoever so I've no idea why that is still even included as a condition in the vulnerable group) and neither are in roles where they're providing personal care or anything like that.