TUC anti-racism taskforce head Patrick Roach slammed “segregation — what some would call apartheid” in the British labour market as he addressed Wales TUC today.

At the height of the Covid pandemic black workers were three to four times more likely to die from the virus and “post-pandemic — if we can call it that — black workers bear the brunt of the cost-of-living crisis.”

Unemployment was now more than twice as high among black people as white people and black workers were paid 24 per cent less on average, meaning the real-terms pay cuts being forced on workers by the British government would hit them even harder.

“Black workers are more likely to be on insecure contracts, have their jobs outsourced or stuck in agency work. Black workers are held back, held down and pushed out of the labour market,” he charged.

He praised the Wales TUC for securing action from the Welsh government and “putting anti-racism at the heart of its vision and programme.

“Contrast that to England where Boris Johnson has the effrontery to claim racism doesn’t exist” and where NASUWT had to take the government to court for its failure to publish equality impact assessments on opening schools in the pandemic.

Mr Roach called on unions to take up race discrimination claims to keep black workers in jobs and ensure the impact of racism was “front and centre of the Covid-19 inquiry.”

Mr Roach, general secretary of teaching union NASUWT, paid tribute to the two teachers and 19 children “brutally slain” in a mass school shooting in Texas on Tuesday, and said unions worldwide stood for “schools being safe sanctuaries free from violence and hatred of any kind.”