Black, Minority, Ethnic

In her small shop on Merritt Island, racks of orange, blue and black T-shirts depict hand drawn rockets, mission patches and moonscapes, ready for the crowds who arrive on regular launch days. But this launch is different, she tells us. “We’ve wanted to go back to the Moon since the ’70s. People are excited. People are beyond excited,” she said.

At UNISON’s annual Black members’ conference in Brighton this year, Windrush was top of the agenda.

Speaking to conference, Reverend Clive Foster from the Windrush Commission acknowledged the contribution that UNISON has made in holding the government to account over the Windrush scandal.

Reverend Foster talked about post-war public services being shaped by the Windrush generation, then the shock of some of them being wrongly deported and treated as if they had no part in this.

“People should not have to navigate complexity to receive what they are owed,” he said.

Hetticia McIntosh (pictured above), a former nurse, shared her experience of having her UK status revoked. “I had my children here, I married here, I was in the army. And yet in 1978, when I went to renew my British passport, I was told that I was not entitled because I am no longer British,” she said.

“Windrush survivors don’t need sympathy, we need action.”

Ms McIntosh urged delegates and conference visitors to sign a petition calling for Windrush survivors’ legal representation to be covered by the state, in the same way the state has provided for the Horizon Post Office scandal survivors and infected blood scandal survivors.

“We, the Black ones, don’t have any legal representation,” she said.

Sign the petition

The first conference motion passed was for the union to fight to close the ethnicity pay gap for Black women.

Davena Rankin from Scotland said: “It’s easy for the debate on the gender pay gap to be abstract, but for UNISON women it’s the lived reality of not getting a mortgage, a lost promotion, no career progression. It’s double jeopardy for a Black woman.”

Another motion called for stronger action on the racism that Black NHS workers face. Moving the motion on behalf of Eastern region, Conroy Trenchfield said: “Black workers particularly face hostility from the public, and often there is a lack of support from colleagues. It’s isolating and demotivating.”

Conference agreed that protests from the far right present a health and safety risk to Black workers. This includes when travelling to work on the day of a far-right demonstration, but also in workplaces in which white colleagues vocalise their support for racist policies.

Another motion called for UNISON to oppose racism and the rise in far-right misinformation, harassment and intimidation. Speakers highlighted the significance of the Together Alliance national demonstration in London on 28 March 2026.

Sandra Okwara, Andrea Egan and Kevin Imoloame. Credit: Marcus Rose

UNISON general secretary Andrea Egan opened Black members’ conference with a speech in which she committed to ‘a new chapter’ for Black union members.

She also gave two prominent UNISON activists awards.

Sandra Okwara (pictured left) won this year’s 2026 Nelson Mandela Award, which is given to those who exemplify Nelson Mandela’s values of ‘determination, a desire for unity, and strength in the face of injustice’.

Kevin Imoloame (pictured right) won the 2026 young Black members’ award UNISON activists under 27 who are dedicated to race equality and passionate about improving workplaces.

Watch Andrea’s full speech on YouTube

“For too long, Black members have carried the weight of discrimination cases that drag on for years, disciplinary processes that fall disproportionately on your shoulders, and workplaces that treat equality as an optional extra.

“I know the hurt, the frustration, the exhaustion that comes from being ignored or sidelined by employers when you raise racism. When your grievance sits unanswered,” she said. “When the trauma is compounded by delay, denial, and silence.”

Andrea explained that, when she was UNISON president in 2023, she led the Year of Black Workers. Now, in her post as general secretary for the next five years, she outlined her vision:

“A union where Black workers are protected, represented, and empowered. A union that uses its collective bargaining strength to challenge racism head on. A union that organises to win.”

A bigger, stronger UNISON

Andrea stated that the fastest-growing part of UNISON’s membership is migrant workers, particularly migrant care workers, many of whom are Black and of African origin.

“Your fight is UNISON’s fight. Your fight is my fight,” she said.

“Together we have to defend jobs. Together we have to protect pay. Together we have to campaign for £15 an hour. Together we have to fight austerity and the cost of living crisis that hits Black communities hardest. We will push for better pay and pensions across public services. And together we have hold to employers to account when they fail our members.

“Tackling racism in the workplace requires more than statements. It requires action.”

Andrea committed to turn the recommendations of the UNISON Race Discrimination Inquiry into action.

“We will support branches to take on employers who fail to protect Black workers. We will ensure equality is not an afterthought but a core industrial issue. This is about justice in the workplace. Fairness in practice, not just policy. Dignity for every member.”

Andrea welcomed the Labour government’s commitment to making ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory in the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill, but said that UNISON will be also demanding mandatory action plans.

She also committed to working with employers across the UK to sign up to the union’s anti-racism charter.

Reform UK

Speaking to the wider political environment, Andrea said the government and Reform UK were painting a false picture that claimed migrant and trans people are a danger to women and girls.

“This transphobic and racist rhetoric does not protect women — it endangers us. It fuels the real causes of harm: misogyny, underfunding, and the privatisation of public services.”

“Right‑wing forces have disguised a class war as a culture war. And I do include Reform UK in that category, selling us a story that asylum seekers seeking refuge in this country are the cause for our broken infrastructure. When it is the rich and powerful who seek to profit from our labour.

“It is years of underfunding from successive governments who choose to fund illegal wars, who profit from arms flowing from the UK to Israel to fund a genocide in Palestine so that their land can be stolen, it is private profiteering that sucks out profit on the back of our labour to build up their stocks and shares.”

A union that organises and challenges

Andrea concluded her speech with a summary of her vision. Under her leadership, UNISON will be ‘a union that stands shoulder to shoulder with Black workers every single day, a union that turns pain into power, a union that delivers change you can see and feel in your workplaces.’

“Together, we will build a union that truly reflects the strength, resilience and leadership of Black workers. A union that fights for justice. A union that wins.”

There are 25 athletes representing Great Britain at the Winter Paralympics, alongside dozens of coaches and support staff.

But at ParalympicsGB House in the mountains of Cortina, one “very good girl” has been stealing the spotlight.

Pickle is an eight-year-old black labrador retriever guide dog.

Her human, Hester Poole, is competing in the visually impaired Para-alpine skiing events.

“She loves the mountains – she’s always really bouncy when she sees the snow,” said Poole, who has had severely limited vision since birth.

“When she comes skiing, it’s nice to get to the bottom of the piste, win or lose, and have this furry ball of love waiting for me.”

Images: Marcus Rose

Debate continued Wednesday morning at national delegate conference with a group of motions concerning Black members.

The motions came on the same morning as the High Court ruling that the government’s decision to scrap key recommendations from the independent review into the Windrush scandal was unlawful.

The first motion, supporting Black members experiencing racism, focused on training and education as an effective way to combat racism.

Moving the motion, Annette Heslop of the national Black members’ committee said: “Racism is real, we need to stop it and stamp it out.”

The motion called on the NEC to work with UNISON College and learning and organising services to create specific training resources on the issue and promote them to stewards and branch officers.

Gloria Hansen (pictured above) said: “The Year of Black Workers was an extraordinary campaign celebrating UNISON’s proud history – and we owe it to the efforts of members across unison” to continue the struggle.

Sue Silva spoke about acknowledging “the slow pace of change and the exclusion of Black workers from discussions” on the issue.

Adding: “UNISON has made progress but further development is necessary enhanced training for branch officers will help them support members effectively.”

Chris Akaluka (above) from Newham Healthcare followed saying: “Racism is a disease that thrives on ignorance, the only thing that can cure this disease is knowledge.

“A union like ours, 1.3m strong, if we all pledge to be allies and fight racism in our workplaces our homes and our streets.”

He asked conference to commit, with him, to pointing out racism in all different aspects of their lives. “We shall point it out,” conference repeated.

After the motion exploring the experience of racism, debate turned to the UNION’s work embedding the legacy of the Year of the Black Worker in 2023.

Joseph Ogundemuren of the Black members’ committee (pictured top), speaking for the motion asked conference to “sustain momentum and cement the legacy of the year,” saying, “our activism must resonate beyond our union.”

Manjula Kumari of the NEC said to achieve the aims of the motion the union: “must start where all good unions start – training and development. So, throughout the year we facilitated workshops, development programmes and mentorship training.”

She told delegates: “We still have a long way to go,” and urged delegates to go back to their employers and start the conversation with employer to sign up to UNISON’s anti-racism charter.

She finished: “Conference, remember the 190,00 Black members that UNISON has. Work with us, be our allies and continue to increase our numbers.”

The motion gave a five-point action plan to evaluate the year’s successes, develop an ongoing programme of training and campaigning and report back to NDC in 2025.

UNISON and the TUC held a joint conference yesterday evening to explore the experience of Black health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Held at Doughty Street Chambers – a barristers’ chambers particularly known for its work on human rights and civil liberties – the aim of the event was to discuss the current UK-wide public inquiry into the pandemic and to ensure that the experience of Black workers in the healthcare sector is heard and acted upon.

Surveys and research have shown how people working in the NHS encountered huge pressures and anxiety during the pandemic – and that Black, Asian and minority ethnic workers often faced additional risk that was not adequately addressed by employers and the government.

Barristers representing the TUC at the UK COVID-19 inquiry talked about the TUC’s work in the inquiry so far and how the TUC and its affiliated unions can shed light on the experiences of Black healthcare workers within the inquiry.

Key issues affecting Black healthcare workers that the TUC and UNISON have highlighted in the inquiry so far include:

• A higher risk of infection and severe disease for Black healthcare workers
• A potential (although the subject of ongoing research) higher risk of suffering Long COVID
• Higher proportions of Black healthcare staff being redeployed into frontline roles and roles that involved a higher risk of COVID-19 infection – for instance, in ‘red zones’
• A more significant mental health impact for Black people during the pandemic
• A failure to undertake appropriate, meaningful risk assessments of Black healthcare workers
• Poor working terms and conditions for outsourced workers, amongst whom Black workers are overrepresented, including low rates of pay and a lack of adequate sick pay
• The government’s pursuit of a policy making vaccination a mandatory condition of being employed within the NHS, despite the disproportionate impact this would have had upon Black workers
• Black workers being at greater risk of working in hazardous situations with inadequate PPE.

The conference also heard from Black healthcare workers about their experiences. These included problems with inadequate PPE – particularly in the opening weeks of the crisis – and even being disciplined for taking their own PPE to work.

The event was also addressed by Baroness Doreen Lawrence, who then took part in a ‘fireside chat’ with Gloria Mills, UNISON’s national secretary for equalities.

Sara Gorton, UNISON’s head of health, gave evidence to the third module of the COVID inquiry last week (above).

The module examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare systems in the four nations of the UK.

Speaking on behalf of the TUC, Ms Gorton gave evidence about both her UNISON role and her role as co-chair of the NHS staff council and the NHS social partnership forum through the pandemic.

Her evidence focussed on the relationship between the trade unions and the employer bodies and NHS England through the pandemic. She also spoke to the state of staff wellbeing morale and resilience prior to and throughout the pandemic and the impact that had on workplace issues like recruitment and retention.

Pre-pandemic

Ms Gorton’s evidence began with questions about how prepared the NHS – particularly the workforce – was before the pandemic.

When asked about the resilience levels of staff prior to the pandemic, she said: “There were signs going into the pandemic, for the few years in the runup, that the workforce had been overlooked and neglected by a government and policy makers who seemed to be obsessed with structure and system architecture rather than addressing the needs of the workforce.”

In reference to a TUC report from early 2020 she said: “The survey paints a picture of people who describe themselves at breaking point. Of not having enough staff, of not having access to the breaks they needed in order to work the shifts. It talks about the pressures they feel under to accept more work to cover the gaps.

“And it talks about the personal impact at the time from feeling they didn’t have what they needed to deliver the services they wanted to [deliver for] patients. It describes people feeling very vulnerable, turning up to work dreading their shifts.

“That’s not a description of a resilient workforce ahead of a major crisis – ahead of a major crisis you want people to feel well-motivated, well-rested and able to deal with it. The signs were there, in this report and other evidence, that this was not the condition of the NHS workforce.”

Early pandemic

The inquiry also focussed on a statement made by the NHS Staff Council in January 2020, two months before the first lockdown.

As a joint body of unions representatives and employers, the NHS Staff Council had written a statement urging local partnerships between employers and trade unions to work together to put in place a set of 12 key principles to combat COVID.

The principles included:

• setting up effective communication channels
• identifying and mitigating risks
• ensuring adequate PPE
• ensuring sufficient fit testing for PPE
• making sure staff are able to raise concerns in a way that doesn’t impose a detriment to them
• managing risk to vulnerable staff
• maintaining care levels for staff members.

When asked for her opinion on whether these key principles adequately foresaw the issues that were faced during the pandemic, Ms Gorton said: “All of the key principles to adhere to were set out here, I think the question is, to what extent those principles were able to be put in place.

“How they were interpreted and implemented at a localised level was the major difficulty.”

Consistency of guidance, official channels

Later in her evidence, Ms Gorton was asked about the trade unions’ role in contributing to and communicating guidance for health staff based on these principles. She noted that right from the start of the pandemic the trade unions knew that: “If we had all worked separately, and all reinterpreted the guidance and put those out through our separate networks, that would mean 17 sets of contrary guidance.

“So, we worked really hard together not only producing advice as joint unions, but ensuring, wherever we could, we were a reputable source of information and were referring people back to the original source documents.

“And we worked with employers to supplement those [pieces of guidance] with frequently asked questions to respond to issues of detail. Obviously, there were areas where the trade unions had been reflecting [back to the employer] either confusion amongst the workforce with the content, or where there were gaps in the content.”

As an example, Ms Gorton highlighted: “Early on in the pandemic there was no reference to the situations in either community settings or ambulance settings and we were hearing from workers in both of those settings that they were being expected to go in and out of homes where they were potentially being exposed to people who were COVID positive.

“At that time there was no testing, so people had no way of telling, other than having symptoms if they were COVID positive or not. So, it was gaps like that we were able to flag.”

The ongoing effect of the pandemic on recruitment and retention

Questioning moved on to staff burnout and the effects of the pandemic on recruitment and retention.

Referencing an element of Ms Gorton’s written submission about 2022 evidence of staff “wanting to leave the NHS due to the pressure of not being able to deliver the appropriate quality and standard of care”, the inquiry’s counsel asked: “Was there anything that could be done to prevent staff leaving due to those concerns?”

She responded: “Working conditions are everything. You can see, in the statement, the themes that workers were raising through their unions about not enough access to rest breaks, about not enough access to rest and recuperation.

“Trade unions knew [this] as early as May 2020, we were raising issues at a central level to call for support packages to be put in place to allow the rest and recovery from dealing with that first phase [of COVID in the UK], which turned out to be a hiatus rather than an end that we might have imagined, but the signs were there that the workforce was already suffering.

“And by the period that you refer to, by 2022, it was really evident that the support hadn’t been provided in sufficient measure to make people feel resilient enough and to make them motivated enough to stay in their jobs.”

On the measures which were put in place during the pandemic she said: “A lot of work was done to set up what was called health and wellbeing portals to provide access to emergency mental health triage, hotlines and on-the-spot occupational health type interventions.

“But what’s really clear is that health workers needed an opportunity for rest and recuperation. And with the levels of staffing in the NHS ahead of the pandemic and compounded by the pandemic, that was really difficult to achieve. And it was going to be an uphill struggle to provide support in enough measure.”

Ms Gorton continued: “This meant that by 2021, one in five health workers were telling us that they were considering or very seriously considering leaving their job in the NHS. It had a profound impact on those workers and the ability of the NHS to recruit staff.

“It’s very clear that the effects of having low staffing had contributed to the way people felt approaching the pandemic, that it worsened during the pandemic and as a consequence it was more difficult for the NHS to recruit and retain staff.

The effect on Black NHS staff

The final section of the inquiry counsel’s questioning centred on the disproportionate impact of COVID on Black staff, citing an admission from NHS England, in a social partnership forum document from June 2020, that they had lost or were losing the trust of those staff.

Ms Gorton said: “This was an honest response to the issues that were coming through in the data and the issues that we were referring as trade unions. I think what you’re seeing in this set of notes is that there is a recognition of the need to look at these issues.

But she added: “The issues that are set out here are specific to the practical effect of the pandemic, but they don’t reach into some of the concerns about structural racism that had been raised prior to the pandemic and still persist beyond it.”

When asked if enough was done after June 2020 done to rebuild trust, she said: “I was at an event held last week where we had the opportunity to talk to staff who’d been through the pandemic, staff from Black backgrounds, and the feeling in the room was that not enough had been done either during the pandemic or since.”

For Glenn Carrington (pictured), Black History Month is a time to remember how far the UK has come in terms of race equality.

A paramedic with the East of England Ambulance Service, based in Peterborough, Glenn is the UNISON branch Black members’ officer and chairperson.

“I was one of the last people to come over on the old Windrush boats,” he explains. “I remember walking off the plank, with my old dad and it was snowing and I said: ‘Dad! What’s this white stuff on the floor?’ I’d come from Barbados, right, and Dad said to touch it and then taste it. I hated it then and I still hate it!” He bursts into a deep, booming laugh before recalling their efforts to find somewhere to stay.

“It’s all well documented – ‘no Blacks, no dogs, no Irish’. When I look back, we’ve come so far since then. I mean, would the NHS run without us? Would the trains run without us? Would the buses run without us? As my mum used to say: ‘You have to integrate’!”

Glenn’s own journey saw a stint in the army, which he left in 1985 and applied to join the police. He passed the relevant entrance exams, but, as it was at a time when Margaret Thatcher’s government had put a hold on recruitment, he couldn’t actually get a job in the force.

“I had young kids at the time and a job with the ambulance service came up and it was routine work and I thought: ‘I tell you what, I’ll do that until I hear from the police’.”

‘A side of myself I didn’t realise I had’

That was in 1986. “I stayed. I just loved it”, he explains. “I discovered a side of myself I didn’t realise I had. A caring side. Empathetic. I liked helping people”.

For a few years, Glenn worked in patient transport. His love of the work continued, but “there’s a side of me that wanted to climb the ladder.” In 1990, he moved into frontline ambulance work and six years further down the line, became a paramedic.

“It was Cambridgeshire Ambulance Service then,” he notes. “I was the only Black paramedic and boy, did I know it!”

“It was challenging,” he says quietly, before adding that, having been in the army previously, “anything that the general public threw at me and anything that the ambulance service threw at me was small fry compared to that.”

He’d been the only Black soldier in his regiment and he says his experiences gave him resilience.

Glenn says that, since then, there’s been “a culture change”. That doesn’t mean there is no longer racism in the ambulance service, but “instead of being in your face, it’s more nuanced, more covert, more subtle.”

To illustrate the differences over time, he recalls being hung upside down in a drill yard while in the army – “I could give many more examples like that” – whereas when he started in the ambulance service it was name calling, finding bogeys on the ambulance steering wheel or “bodily fluids” on his seat – “childish stuff”. Today, he says it’s more passive aggressive.

“I’ve had more trouble with colleagues than I’ve had with patients,” says Glenn, noting that, when people are in pain, they don’t care what colour a paramedic is or how they identify – they just want someone to help them.

Indeed, problems in the workplace were heightened in the summer’s far-right riots. Describing the situation as “scary”, he observes that it was “the loud minority rather than the silent majority” that was behind the trouble.

He is also quite clear that politicians “that look like us” yet make racist comments enable others to “think it’s okay to start doing that too”. Glenn says that he would go into the station and see messages from colleagues shared to a WhatsApp group, of pictures and footage of the rioting, and with deeply offensive comments about immigrants in general.

When he said to them: “You do know I wasn’t born here?” the reaction was “‘Oh, we don’t mean you.’ But they thought it was okay to share.”

He says that things got so bad that “we’ve had a few people dismissed over that – and rightly so”. It was difficult, not least as Glenn and his fellow UNISON members “had to call some people out. We had to stand our ground. The way I see it, if that’s the way you think, are you really in the right profession?

“We’re here to help people, be they Black, be they white, be they gay, be they straight, be they transgender – we’re here to help people. We’re not here to judge – keep your opinions to yourself. And I’d argue that the people who shared those messages and put KKK stickers on our lockers shouldn’t be here.

“There’s been a bit of backlash, but it’s calming down now.”

And of his mother’s comments about the need to integrate, he notes: “You look at the [England] football team – there’s a lot of people of colour there. The cricket team – when it didn’t have people of colour, it was useless!”

“We’re there, we’re here, we’re contributing.

“When I got here, the national dish was fish and chips. I like my fish and chips, but now the national dish is either Chinese or a curry. It’s Christmas Day and you’ve run out of Bisto for the gravy, where do you run to? It’s either one of the Asian shops or one run by eastern Europeans because they’re the only ones that are open!

“What I like about this country, after right-wing rhetoric has all died down, is how we’ve amalgamated, how multi-cultural it is. And I think that’s a good thing and I think that’s lovely.”

Passionate about equality

Maria Alberts, a member of the admin team at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead also saw first-hand the problems created by the summer’s violence.

“When the far-right riots kicked off, there was a lot of uncertainty from the nursing staff from overseas just coming in. The trust organised taxis for people to come into work,” she says.

“Most of the racism that people were facing was from staff rather than patients. It has been addressed – and the trust has dismissed people because of that. And that’s why it’s zero tolerance.”

A member of the UNISON service group executive, Maria is particularly passionate about equalities and, earlier this year, was awarded the Northern TUC Equality Award.

Her hospital is part of the Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust – she’s proud that it was the first trust to sign up to the Race Equality Charter.

“We got Show Racism the Red Card in to train the managers, which we did for three months,” she explains.

She’s also been involved in setting up a group on zero tolerance that meets every month and has created “changes not just for the staff, but for the patients as well.

“It’s made a difference. If you can’t care for your staff, how can you care for your patients when we live in a multi-cultured region?” she asks.

And in terms of improving the hospital experience for Black patients, Maria has also been involved – not least with helping improve “basic needs”, such as Black skin and hair care.

As we come to the end of this year’s Black History Month, it couldn’t be clearer that UNISON’s Black members have histories to relate and that, as Glenn put it, they’re here and they’re contributing.

Long-term UNISON activist Sharon Foster (pictured) has won the 2025 Nelson Mandela Award. The award is given to those who exemplify Nelson Mandela’s values of ‘determination, a desire for unity, and strength in the face of injustice’.

Sharon has worked in public services for almost four decades. Throughout this time, she has been an active champion of equality, inclusion and diversity and played a leading role in fighting domestic abuse.

Sharon has held several roles within UNISON, which most recently included chairing the national women’s committee and the Black members’ standing orders committee. She is an active steward in the Bristol branch and the South West regional women’s and Black members’ committees, where she champions equality, inclusion and diversity causes and has also played a leading role in the fight against domestic abuse and race discrimination.

Her unwavering passion, leadership, and dedication to equality have made a significant impact on countless lives, exemplifying the core values of the union.

Sharon has also helped bring historical changes to the union, including helping to develop UNISON’s leadership training programme, which is being rolled out to all members. She also helped develop the national Black members motion, which saw recruitment of Black officers become union policy.

Her campaigning hasn’t stopped within the union though. Sharon has also campaigned tirelessly for changes to universal credit and visited 11 Downing Street. She has also represented UNISON at parliamentary lobbies demanding accountability for the Windrush scandal.

On top of her dedication to the union, Sharon has also been a magistrate in Bristol, spent time as a school governor and is the single parent of an adult child.

In 2023, Sharon was appointed as High Sheriff of Bristol – the first Black Caribbean woman to hold the position. Sharon’s main priority was raising awareness of children’s exclusions from school, an issue which sees Black boys disproportionately affected.

Sharon also launched The Shining Stars, an event that celebrated the achievements and resilience of previously excluded children from school and promoted future opportunities for them.

She is currently a board member of Learning Partnership West, which exists to ensure no child or young person is left without support with their education, and is also a trustee of Beira Mozambique Trust, a project of the Southern African Resources Centre which emerged in the UK during the historic campaign to free Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment.