Originally published here.

Within the UK transport sector underrepresentation of Black and Asian minorities, just like the gap in racial inequality in the UK higher education system continues to grow wider (Stevenson et .al.,2019).

The present report seeks to underpin why, and what issues are causing this under presentation to occur and what actions need to be taken to include more BAME in the transport industry and some key recommendations.

It is argued that lack of confidence, inadequate communication skills and low level of education in BAME  (Walker, 2016) have contributed to making this under-representation more probable. However, BAME opportunities remain restricted in the transport industry, despite government policy outlined in the Equality Act (2010) which protects minorities. Conversely, this is not adhered to by employers due to a historically male-dominated workforce and gender stereotypes about race and ethnicity(Hicks,2012).  But, positive changes are afoot with the British Transport Police being accused of discrimination with a ‘positive action’ taken  to bar white men from their recruitment workshops to enhance the chances of minority Officers getting into the force (Greenwood,2017) which they consider as ‘legal.’  Also, more BAME are being integrated into apprenticeships with more Black women in Engineering training positions.

In the transport sector, bridging the gap with other ethnic groups is slow but commendable.It must be borne in mind that this lackluster progress hinges on gender bias(Triana, 2017), difficult working conditions which are not very flexible, safety issues with unsociable working hours and reconciling work and private life.

Looking forward to the future, one must submit that it is a business advantage to have a very diverse workforce.Employers could create job adverts that challenge gender and race stereotypes (Brown, 2019) and a diverse friendly recruitment page.This sums up   Violeta Bulc's argument (2019) that underrepresentation of BAME could be minimized by the inclusion of digitalization and automation in the workforce to facilitate the entry of minorities.

The society of the United Kingdom is mixed with minority people and white people. Therefore, the underrepresentation of minority groups has become one of the major concerns of today. There are various corporate sectors in the United Kingdom, deliver inequalities in the hiring and employment process. However, the transport industry creates such rules and regulations for the hiring process to reduce the inequalities between white and minority people of the UK. The above report justifies that, there are various barriers to employment faced by  BAME such as lack of communication skills, technical skills. Moreover, the standard of education is the biggest problem appeared at the time of the interview.

Further, with the help of the UK government, the transport industry is introducing training and development programs to advance the career of minority people. From the analysis of the above research, it is clear that small corporate sectors should follow governmental rules and build their company’s image by employing both the minority and white people.  From the observation of the above research, higher authorities should prepare some rules and regulations to deliver equalities between minority and white people. In the hiring process, minority groups should be considered by every corporate sector. The Government of the UK should highly work on the issues of underrepresentation of BAME by fighting racial discrimination, unconscious bias, and hate of BAME.

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