- Conference
- 2025 Water, Environment & Transport Conference
- Date
- 13 February 2025
- Decision
- Carried
Conference is proud that UNISON is one of the founding members of the Disability Employment Charter (DEC) which now has over 220 organisations signed up to it, including trade unions, disabled people’s organisations, public service employers, charitable organisations, and private sector employers. However, the Water, Environment and Transport (WET) Service Group is not well represented among these.
Conference welcomes the Labour government’s Employment Rights Bill but acknowledges that this will take time to become law and subsequently be implemented. The best employers are already acting now to make a difference to the working lives of disabled people.
The DEC was founded because of the disadvantage that disabled people experience in the labour market and workplaces. Disabled people are less likely to be employed than non-disabled people. The employment rate of disabled people is 53% compared to 82% of non-disabled people. This difference is known as the disability employment gap and has consistently stood at a rate of around 30 percentage points. This gap is due to a number of factors including disability discrimination, failure to make reasonable adjustments, inaccessible workplaces and structural ableism.
Those disabled people who, despite these barriers, manage to get a job then face a pay gap which sees them paid almost 20% less than non-disabled employees. On top of this, according to recent research by disability charity Scope, disabled people incur on average approximately £1000 in additional disability associated costs. This works out at about 63% of their household income after housing costs are included. The cost-of-living crisis has compounded the poverty experienced by disabled people.
The DEC outlines nine actions that the government needs to take to address the disadvantage disabled people encounter in their working lives. Each of the nine areas of action contain several specific asks that we believe will help achieve positive change for disabled people’s employment outcomes, including:
1)disability pay gap reporting
2)supporting disabled people into employment
3)reform of Access to Work (AtW)
4)reform of disability confident
5)leveraging government procurement
6)workplace adjustments
7)working with disabled people and their representatives
8)advice and support
9)national progress on disability employment
The charter is primarily a campaigning tool that calls on government, rather than employers, to take the kind of legislative and cross-sectoral action that is needed to radically improve the rights of disabled people in the workplace. Employers are asked to sign up to it to show that they want a Labour government to take action, as outlined in their manifesto, after 14 years of Tory vandalism.
However, some disabled members have reported that their employers have agreed to the principles of the DEC but are reluctant to sign up as the call is on the government to take actions. It is important that we support those branches in making the argument to their employer while also seeking other ways in which the charter can be used, including when it comes to workplace bargaining.
Some disabled members report that their branches have used the employment charter as a bargaining and negotiating tool to improve working conditions for disabled members; with employers reporting on the make-up of the workforce, reporting on disability pay gaps, increasing employment opportunities for disabled people, incorporating commitments to disability equality in the procurement process and providing reasonable adjustments more quickly.
Conference calls on the WET Service Group Executive to work with the National Disabled Members Committee and other areas of the union as appropriate to:
a)Continue to encourage regions and branches to promote employer signups to the disability employment charter, particularly in WET employers where UNISON organises
b)Provide guidance to branches on the arguments to make when seeking WET employer signups and on how the disability employment charter can be adapted for use as a bargaining and negotiating tool to promote disability rights at work, including flexible working arrangements and reasonable adjustments
c)Identify champions from WET branches who have utilised the disability employment charter to improve working conditions for disabled members in the WET Service Group and are willing to share best practice across the union