The RMT is calling for outsourcing – the use of contractors to provide services like cleaning and catering – to be abolished on the railways.

A new report from the union called ‘How outsourcing embeds systemic racism on the railway’, claims that thousands of workers, who are predominantly from black and minority ethnic communities, are ‘trapped’ in outsourced jobs with no pensions or training and have no pathway to promotion.

Surveys have revealed that 58 per cent of outsourced cleaners and caterers are from these backgrounds, although they make up only 25 per cent of the staff directly employed by train operating companies.

In London and the south east up to 80 per cent of outsourced cleaners are BME, compared with 40 per cent of train and station staff.

The report adds that 82 per cent of outsourced workers want to build a career in Great British Railways, but 77 per cent have never had a discussion about promotion, and 68 per cent have had no ‘meaningful’ training in the last three years.

The union claims that companies use outsourcing to create a two-tier workforce, depriving staff of sick pay, pension rights and job security, ‘all while extracting shareholder profit’, and it is calling on the government to take action.

General secretary Eddie Dempsey said: ‘Outsourcing is one of the most exploitative practices, enshrining dreadful employment conditions and low pay for workers.

‘Black and ethnic minority workers bear the major brunt of this super exploitation and are effectively trapped in second-class employment, unable to progress in a train company or Network Rail.

‘Outsourcing is inefficient and wastes public money while company bosses and shareholders make obscene amounts of money, much of it leaving the country all together.

‘RMT will fight tooth and nail to see these workers brought in-house, so they can enjoy the benefits our other members have being directly employed.

‘Labour has promised the biggest wave of insourcing for a generation. We intend to hold them to their promises and build on what they have started with GBR.’

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