The British government is considering forcing private companies to reveal how many Afro-Caribbean workers they employ in order to shame them into hiring more.
The Sun reports that in an interview with Colourful Radio, Prime Minister David Cameron said that more needed to be done to “level the playing field”, especially as educational achievement among black, Chinese and Indian children improves.
He added that the government would study whether forcing companies to reveal the ethnic makeup of their employees would help increase the number of ethnic minorities hired.
The Prime Minister said: “We do need to do more to level the playing field. The educational attainment of young black boys has improved in recent years and that’s really, really welcome.
“I’m interested in ideas of more transparency as that has made a difference in the past.”
Despite the comments, the Prime Minister insisted that good schools and role models were more important than quotas. He also called for greater “engagement” from employers in hiring more ethnic minority workers.
Colourful Radio producer Loanna Morrison welcomed the comments. She told the Sun: “At the moment when you have a black candidate and white candidate with the same qualifications, more often than not the white one gets the job.
“We’re not asking companies to hit set targets or quotas.
“But hopefully by encouraging companies to publish the numbers they’ll be under subtle pressure to balance out the workforce.”
A spokesperson from the Institute of Directors, one of Britain’s largest business groups, said: “It’s hard to see any meaningful benefits coming from the state ordering businesses to collect and publish this kind of data. That’s not to say that some companies and boards might not see a value in doing so, but it certainly shouldn’t be mandatory.”
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