Think HR is your friend? Think again

Indigenous and BIPOC employees would be wise not to assume that HR is an ally.

Disturbing statistics show that Indigenous and BIPOC employees who raise equity, diversity and inclusion concerns get placed on the shit list. 

In recent years, many organizations have claimed to embrace equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) as part of their core values and mission. However, a disturbing trend has emerged that contradicts these claims and exposes hypocrisy and injustice. According to several reports and surveys, Indigenous and BIPOC employees who raise EDI concerns or challenge discriminatory practices are often met with hostility, retaliation and exclusion. They are labelled as troublemakers, complainers, angry, noncollaborative, or worse, and placed on the shit list (more on that later). This silences their voices and marginalizes their experiences, allowing oppression and inequality to continue. The harm arising makes work life precarious, unbearable, and unsustainable.

What is the shit list, you ask? Well, a United Association Local 488 pipefitter taught me what that was. 

First, allow me to give a little context. After school, I spent a few years in a labour relations organization (we were not involved in front-line LR/HR). I was seconded to one of our member companies and sent to a construction site for real-world experience.

I am so grateful for this experience, but it dished out some painful doses of truth.

Inconvenient Facts Reveal Character

For example, a scaffolder was sent to the site where there were legitimate concerns over his fitness and physical ability to perform the work. I was asked what to do, and I said that we needed to raise the concerns with the individual, provide physical demands analysis and ask him to take it to his doctor to see if there are activities on the list that he could not perform safely. Once we got the form back, filled out by his doctor, we would review it and see if we needed to modify or restrict his duties to keep him safe.

Too late. Somehow, unwanted advice is often deemed untimely. Funny thing.

What did they do? They sent the scaffolder climbing. They got him to climb a 400-foot scaffold build four times (to tire him out). Meanwhile, they installed a window into a headache shack (a make-shift, pop-up forepersons office on construction sites). Then they had the fatigued scaffolder count scaffold tickets (tedious work) in the headache shack with a herman nelson (a high-intensity space heater) blasting away. Their goal was to keep him there until he fell asleep, take a picture through the newly installed window, and then fire him for sleeping on the job.

"You're right," I said, "that is much easier than asking for a medical review of his capabilities." The site's crude, unethical measures disgusted me.

I walked off the project site. I was not the HR person they were looking for.

What is the Shit List?

But before all of that, I met Jason on the site. Jason was a pipefitter apprentice who was also a weightlifter. He was physical and liked to throw his weight around while torquing wrenches and lifting material, equipment and tools into place. I met him after he suffered a hernia and needed light duties while he recovered. I spoke to him directly, saying the company would support him. He rolled his eyes.

"What is that about?" I asked.

He said, "he was going to get put on the shit list."

"The shit list?" I asked.

"The list everyone goes on who gets hurt, where as soon as you get cleared for full duty, you are laid off," he explained.

I promised I would not let that happen. I monitored his file directly until the project was over from the corporate office. No one was going to lay him off until there was actually a shortage of work.

We would meet years later, and I found that he took a shine to the labour relations field. I would give him a reference, and he started his career with Ganotech as a management-side labour relations representative. He served the industry and our profession well. My friend and colleague Jason taught me a valuable lesson about the shit list - it was a dishonest, crude, unethical method of avoiding responsibilities and obligations to people on your team.

Be Wary of HR People who Run Away from the Organization's Problems Rather than Toward them.

Some people, including HR people, are incapable of holding space to understand and represent in uncomfortable or complicated situations. They want whatever "this" is to be removed.

The shit list is the cowardly and convenient eraser. In corporate life we call the shit list the not-for-cause termination. It happens all the time.

What is happening today with this in relation to BIPOC and Indigenous employees?

Corporate leadership directs HR to support diversity, equity and inclusion as part of a branding and image objective. They do not embark on this journey in the spirit of true actual reconciliation or in the pursuit of achieving authentic equity, inclusion or diversity objectives. The problem is that EDI and reconciliation are complex and challenging work.

So when BIPOC or Indigenous employees ask difficult questions, many HR professionals erase them or, terminate them not for cause.

Then the same HR recruits another BIPOC or Indigenous candidate, hoping this time, they will obediently participate in social media photoshoots and not ask those silly questions about true equity, diversity and justice.

This was recently highlighted in the following article in The Globe and Mail article by Andrea YU , I am the only person from a diverse background and am being selected for many activities. Can I say no? - The Globe and Mail

Tokenized Indigenous and BIPOC employees are on thin ice, raising such concerns to their employers. The fact that the company tokenizes them is a strong sign that they are not in a safe environment. Social media pics are clean, quick and easy. Actual reconciliation is complicated. HR involved in tokenizing equity-deserving people are not interested in complicated.

They likely lack the skill to hold space for difficult conversations. This means they are incapable of standing beside you as an ally.

Keep notes, build a network of friends and allies away from work, and get expert advice. Please check in on your mental health and do what you can to stay healthy - often, it will be a long and bumpy road.

In these circumstances, company HR is not your friend. In fact, statistics show they are your eraser.

All the best, and keep trudging.

Sam Kemble