A petition calling for mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting for UK businesses that have 250 or more employees has received over 100,000 signatures.

The petition was launched in March, before the death of George Floyd, but the protests that ensued have seen the number of signatures soar. Having now reached over 100,000 signatures, this topic will now be debated in parliament.

The petitions organisers comment:

“Much like the existing mandatory requirement for employers with 250 or more employees to publish their gender pay gap, we call upon the government to introduce ethnicity pay gap reporting, to shine a light on race/ethnicity-based inequality in the workplace so that they can be addressed. Currently there is a lack of data available in gauging the ethnicity pay gap in the workplace. Introducing these measures will allow employers to be held accountable in closing the gap where there is disparity. In order to achieve a fairer workplace, publishing this data is one of the next steps to knowing how extensive the issues are from a race and ethnicity perspective and not just through the lens of gender.”

David Issac, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said:

“One of the abiding calls from the race discussions we’ve had over the past two weeks is, ‘what are we going to do now?’. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to seek to resolve these issues. We do need action, we need to build upon the recommendations made, many by the McGregor-Smith report, and the good work that Business in the Community and others have done. We would like to make pay gap reporting mandatory and we’d like to build upon the data that currently exists… I do not feel that its overly bureaucratic to introduce and respond to mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.”

If you have more than 250 employees you will be familiar with the current gender pay gap reporting rules, brought into force in 2017, that require organisations to publish and report specific figures about their gender pay gap - the difference between the average earnings of men and women, expressed relative to men’s earnings.

The McGregor-Smith review looked at the issues faced by businesses in developing black and minority ethnic (BME) talent from when they start work through to the executive level. It made a series of recommendations, including for the Government to legislate to ensure that all listed companies and businesses employing more than 50 people publish workforce data broken down by race and pay band.

A UK Government consultation on ethnicity pay reporting concluded in January 2019, although the results of this have yet to be published.

To sign the petition, visit https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300105.