- Conference
- 2009 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 23 February 2009
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes the great strides that UNISON has been able to make supporting disabled people’s rights to employment, goods, facilities and services by using the Disability Discrimination Act’s (DDA) provisions to challenge discriminatory actions. We also applaud UNISON’s commitment to promote equality within the union through its own equality scheme.
More recently disabled people have benefited from changes to disability legislation to improve public authority employment and service provision. This has resulted in better opportunities to obtain and keep accessible employment through the provision of reasonable adjustments and our branch activists are well placed to handle important cases of local representation when our members are facing disability discrimination.
Disability legislation is complex and challenging; negotiating an end to disability discrimination requires skills and knowledge that need to be constantly reviewed and updated. Knowledge updates can be found within our own union resources as well as those provided through external learning providers. Conference recognises that more needs to be done to support our activists; they need a wider understanding of the DDA’s provisions, the value of the Code of Practice on Employment and Occupation and they should be provided with legal briefings on successful and unsuccessful DDA cases. Training is also a key tool to the role of a successful activist. We are concerned that branch officers may not be able to access enough training, specialist information and support. For example, disabled members may be wrongly advised by their employers that redeployment, termination of contract on grounds of capability, redundancy or retirement on the ground of ill-health, as alternatives to continued support at work through employer funded reasonable adjustments and support from the Department for Work and Pensions Access to Work Scheme and our activists need to be able to rebuke such claims.
Our activists also need to consider how their roles at branch and regional level can have a considerable impact on the speed at which they champion equality through the UNISON equality scheme. Training on the scheme, including how to undertake equality impact assessments could speed up activists’ roles, generate better negotiation outcomes and be a useful recruitment tool.
Conference therefore instructs the National Executive Council to:
1)Consolidate on the previously successful UNISON “Beyond the Barriers” campaign by producing a further campaigning tool to promote disabled people’s equal rights;
2)Increase the range of learning and organising resources to keep branch activist up to date with arguments to protect disabled members’ rights at work through robust and substantive branch, regional and nationally based training for activists and members that can be used to support the success of the UNISON equality scheme;
3) Encourage and raise the awareness of branches of the importance of adequately informing and supporting disabled LGBT people and other disabled members, who may be particularly isolated in the workplace, of the relevance of the DDA Act so as to enhance protection and knowledge of workplace rights.
Conference also instructs the National Executive Council to report back all progress to Conference 2010.