This story contains language that may be offensive.
Rachel Bos loved being a teacher — she said it was the "perfect career" for her.
She tells SBS that during her 20-years as a primary school and high school teacher in Australia and New Zealand, there were a lot of good times.
But, the Kaurna woman felt that she experienced "death by a thousand cuts" from racism in schools, leading her to quit in 2019.
She says she was passed over for promotional positions, as an Aboriginal woman, because senior colleagues wanted to keep her in the classroom "because I was doing such a great job with Aboriginal kids."
"I've been given classes in subject areas I don't teach, because that's where the Aboriginal kids are", she says.
She says racist attitudes and "micro-aggressions" were continual, hard to pin-point, and came from both students and teachers.
But over time they took a toll on her well-being and after an incident in 2019, where a colleague made an off-hand remark, Rachel never went back into the classroom to teach.
"I was at the photocopier, and I was down on all fours trying to look at it because it was clogged and it wasn't working. And a colleague walked past and said, Rachel, the photocopy is not working today. It must be black.'"
She said the incident "Just broke me". Other colleagues saw the incident and didn't stand up for her.
"Ordinarily it would just be water off the duck's back. But the thing about racism that I think it's really important for people to understand is that it's like death by a thousand cuts. The small little microaggressions add up over time, and the big things and everything — until you just can't cope anymore."
She says there weren't proper reporting mechanisms for her to report racism at work, and she felt "gaslit" into thinking she had a bad sense of humour when she tried to call out racism.
"People are looking for these really big events or these big targeted, racist things that happen. But sometimes racism can be as simple as just having to deal with these things over and over and over again in our careers."
Bos has now joined a roundtable in Canberra as a representative from the Australian Council of Trade Unions, joining community leaders and workplace advocates to call for a national inquiry into racism in workplaces.
The roundtable has heard that there has been a surge in racism over the past five years, driven by COVID-19, the Indigenous Voice referendum, the October 7 attacks and anti-Indian political messaging.
Australia's race discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman says while people are aware of the negative impacts, there's no full picture as to how much workplace racism has cost society.
Workplace racism could take the form of a lack of recognition of skills for some migrants or forcing some groups to undertake English proficiency tests, Sivaraman said.
"But we don't know the full extent of it. We don't know how it's impacting people's lives," he said.
"We know that it diminishes people and it damages our economy and our society as a whole, but we need to learn more."
The 2018 Respect at Work inquiry into sex discrimination, which had all 45 recommendations implemented in policy, is the model touted to deliver results on racism.
"An inquiry into racism at work has the potential to ... change workers' lives and workplaces for the better," Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O'Neil said.
Unions received complaints in every industry and sector but migrant workers in regional areas were particularly at risk of racist exploitation, O'Neil said.
"In the agricultural sector, we have large numbers of workers coming in on visas, who often are hidden away," she said.
"They're more vulnerable because they don't have permanency here, but they often experience racism and, in fact, violence in the workplace."
Labor is yet to commit to the national anti-racism framework, which was handed down by the Australian Human Rights Commission last November.
— With additional reporting by the Australian Associated Press.
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