- Conference
- 2024 National Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 8 December 2023
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that 2.6m people in the UK are now on long term sick leave and staff in the health sector are likely to be impacted more than other sectors due to unsustainable workloads. Many people on long term sick leave will meet the Equality Act definition of a disabled person and as such should be entitled to disability leave in relation to time off related to their disability.
However conference notes that many Health employers do not offer disability leave and disabled staff are instead forced to take sick leave, annual leave or unpaid leave in order to manage their impairments. This can result in these staff being placed on a capability review and can end in the termination of their employment.
Although disability leave is a type of reasonable adjustment and is given as an example of a reasonable adjustment in the statutory code that accompanies the Equality Act, only 17% of employers in a recent UNISON survey of disabled workers said their employer had a disability leave policy.
Some NHS Trusts do offer disability leave but in many cases this includes an arbitrary cap on the number of days allowed. However each disabled worker has their own unique needs – some may never need to take disability leave while others might need more than five days, for example. Branches should therefore be encouraged to use UNISON’s disability leave bargaining guide to seek to ensure disability leave agreements are as good as they can negotiate.
Many disabled workers also themselves care for older or disabled family members. Carers are now legally entitled to one week’s leave a year, but this leave is unpaid. A worker who is caring for a disabled dependant is protected from ‘discrimination by association’ under the Equality Act 2010 if they are treated unfavourably on the basis of their dependant’s protected characteristic of being disabled.
Forcing carers to use up annual leave for caring commitments such as accompanying a dependant to their routine medical or dental appointment, will mean that these employees will not fully benefit from the same amount of rest and recuperation offered to other employees through their paid annual leave.
UNISON encourages Health employers to adopt a carers leave policy that is significantly better than the legal minimum and we recommend branches negotiate on the basis of 10 days paid leave with additional leave in exceptional circumstances. Much of a carer’s responsibility may be ongoing and routine, and a form of leave to cover emergencies would not provide sufficient support to enable carers to fulfil commitments. It is therefore important to include planned and regular carers leave in any agreement where possible.
Conference calls on the service group executive to:
1)Circulate UNISON’s Disability Leave Bargaining Guide and encourage branches to negotiate based on the UNISON model policy
2)Circulate UNISON’s ‘Carers’ policies: a bargaining guide and model policy’ to regions and branches and encourage them to negotiate for a carers leave policy.