The Public Sector

Abstract

Thus far we have looked at the problems of employment discrimination either in terms of national patterns or in relation to the practices of private employers. The public sector, in which hiring policies are much more standardised and centralised, and which may be more directly guided by government policy, requires separate treatment. In this chapter we first look at employment in the Civil Service and the nationalised industries. Next considered is the potential use of the power of central government in the market-place — as a consumer of goods produced in the private sector — as a means of securing that its contractors do not discriminate, or indeed make active efforts to ensure equal opportunity. The last area examined is employment by the police, in which decisions are largely made independently by each Force, though in some respects uniform national standards must be applied.