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A new report has found that almost 60 per cent of Indigenous employees experience racism at work. The report also found that, at the current rate of change, it could take 118 years before Indigenous employees never hear racial slurs and jokes at work. The ABC spoke to Josh Gilbert who is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Indigenous People and Work at the University of Technology Sydney. He says having the data means concrete action can now be taken.

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00:02It's obviously quite shocking. Unfortunately, that's the experience that many mob within
00:06the workplace feel. I guess what is good is that we're actually able to show some of the
00:10data and shed light into some of those experiences. And we have 1,158 people share their experiences
00:16and their truths with us so that we can consolidate that into a report so that people can understand
00:22what that lived experience is like. Can you give us an example of that lived experience
00:25that stuck out to you in the course of your research? Yeah, I mean, there's a whole range
00:29of different experiences and obviously there's a risk of aggregating all the data up into one.
00:34But I guess some of the shocking things for me, one thing we found is that for every one in
00:38two
00:39Indigenous people during the course of their careers will work an additional year on unpaid workplace
00:44demands. That being, you know, going to a range of cultural activities, engaging in RAP and
00:48Reconciliation Action Plan and NAIDOC week activities. All of that consolidated takes over
00:53a year of work over their entire careers and that's completely unpaid. We've also had some real tragic
00:58stories of people who have been overlooked for promotion, hearing racial slurs and obviously
01:03the statistic that you shared before, 118 years. That's how long it will take before all of our
01:09workplaces, based on the current rate of change, will be free of racism. Oh, racist remarks.
01:14How did you come up with that number? Yeah, so we conducted this survey five years ago in 2020.
01:19We had over a thousand respondents to that survey and we've compared what the rate of change is compared to
01:25now over the last five years and then looked at what the rate of change across those two years has
01:30been and where we kind of think the trend is heading and that's given us the 118 years.
01:35Okay, so how can employers ensure that Indigenous workers feel safe and valued at work?
01:42There's a lot of things workplaces can do. One of the good statistics that's come out,
01:47one of the good findings, is that where workplaces have a plan around anti-racism, where they have
01:53complaints procedures, actually complaints procedures, that actually really reduces workplace
01:58racism and at least keeps people within the workplace. They're really obvious things to do.
02:03What instead though is happening is most workplaces are celebrating days of significance, they're
02:08celebrating Reconciliation Week or NAIDOC Week, but actually aren't doing the activities that are really
02:12needed to keep people in the workplace. So where organisations can shift, where they can do the
02:17positive work and can have anti-racism complaints procedures as well, all of that will make sure that
02:22people have a much better experience, they're more likely to stay in the workforce and therefore
02:26they'll have a much better experience as well. But do Indigenous workers tend to report
02:31instances of racism that they experience? Unfortunately not, there's a bit of a stigma
02:35around with people doing that. There's also some challenges, so one of the quotes that we shared
02:40this morning at the launch is somebody had made complaints around some of their staff members,
02:45all of those staff members had been promoted at work and yet that poor Indigenous person
02:49haven't been promoted. So that's obviously some of the things that we need to work on.
02:53Anti-racism complaints procedures definitely help with that and we're able to at least address some
02:58of those issues, you know, through that pipeline. So last week the Federal Government launched an
03:02inquiry into racism, hate and violence directed at Indigenous people. Will your organisation be making
03:08a submission to that inquiry? Yes, absolutely. We've been calling for a inquiry, a racism work inquiry
03:15for the last year with the ACTU and the Australian Human Rights Commission and we're really glad by
03:20the opportunity to be able to put in the submission to that inquiry as well. Josh Gilbert, thank you so
03:24much. Thanks so much.
03:26you
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