Workforce ethnicity

Zimmerman devoted the final portion of her talk to the intellectual pipeline of people. Zimmerman feels that this is the time to embark on the issues of ethnic and gender diversity in the workforce. If this issue is addressed now, when sustainability has the attention of the scientific community, we can gain the benefit of a diverse workforce that is engaged in and trained in sustainability. 

What is diversity Within this workshop, we have been primarily defining diversity in terms of race and ethnicity. There is also diversity in gender as well as diversity in career paths. Diversity in the chemical workforce should not be framed solely within a discussion of academic achievement as the one and only possible route for a success story. Success stories are also to be found in industry. We should therefore think about the need for diversity in many different directions. We should think about it in a holistic kind of way, if you will pardon a new-age term. It is all related. So, do not try to solve just one diversity problem within a particular setting. Instead think about how solving that problem might fit in within the context of all the other problems. 

Most recently, activation has become an important part of integration policies and vice versa. On the one hand, activation is seen as an instrument to get more persons from ethnic minorities integrated into the labour market. On the other hand, integration policy is perceived as salient to increase the number of persons in the workforce, i.e. by getting larger shares of non- and unemployed persons from ethnic minorities into work. 

Less than 1% of the construction industry operative and site-based workforce are women (UCATT 2015), and it has been estimated that less than 4% within the workforce as a whole are from a black or ethnic minority background (Chaudhry 2014). Whilst the industry has been a traditional employer of foreign and migrant workers on sites, they have been estimated to only form around 12% of the site-based workforce (McMeeken 2015). The vast majority of the site-based workforce is white and male. The lack of women within the workforce has led to what is frequently described as a macho culture on sites, and on UK construction sites at least, this last bastion of the traditional male working class is characterised by the use of sexual language and humour, macho behaviour... 

The private sector will benefit directly if the Millennium Development Goals are achieved by having access to a healthier and better educated workforce, a more stable investment climate, and a reduction in the business risks that accompany poverty-related problems such as global insecurity, climate change and ethnic conflict. It will also benefit from the vast new markets that will be created by drawing the 4 billion people that currently live on less than US 2 per day into economic life [22]. 

The workforce is predominantly women (98%), ethnically Russians (90%) with the mean age of 42 years. The main production of the company is work clothes (jackets, trousers, smocks, overalls, winter clothes and specific work clothes). In 2002, no risk assessment was carried out in the company. 

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