Mayor Khan has announced that TfL will now be conducted "personal risk assessments" for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) workers, in response to the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on black people and other people of colour.
It's not clear exactly what the assessments will consist of or how they'll be conducted. On the face of it, this is a positive move: unions have rightly demanded particular attention be given to the issue of Covid inequality and the disproportionate impact on black workers. We await to see whether these risk assessments will be meaningful, or just token gestures. If they all mysteriously conclude that it's safe for everyone to work as normal with a few minor mitigations in place, we'll be forced to conclude the latter.
Another glaring gap in this strategy is that, currently, the risk assessments are apparently only available to directly-employed staff, despite the fact that there are high concentrations of BAME people amongst outsourced workers, especially cleaners. The risk assessments must be available to everyone working on TfL, whether directly-employed or outsourced, or they'll simply perpetuate structural inequalities.
