Have you heard of the Disability Employment Charter?

To be honest with you, I wish that I did not need to write this article because we lived in a society where disabled workers were not discriminated against and we did not need a Disability Employment Charter. Unfortunately, we do not yet live in that world.

The world we live in is one in which one in eight disabled workers do not tell their employer about their disability, health condition or impairment, with many believing that telling their employer would lead to negative consequences, that is, they felt they would be treated unfairly and discriminated against.

These fears of being treated poorly are well founded. The report and survey published by the TUC in June 2021 showed that one third of disabled workers responding to the survey reported being treated unfairly at work because of their disability, health condition or impairment.

The Disability Employment Charter is currently supported by 7 Trade Unions including the TUC, UCU, Unite and Unison who were one of the six founding members. Over 250 different organisations and employers have signed the Disability Employment Charter, is your employer one of them?

In March 2022 the UCU and Unison moved a Composite Motion at the TUC Disabled Workers Conference which, after a good debate, was not only passed, it was also selected by the Conference to go forward as the only motion from the TUC Disabled Workers Conference for debate at the rescheduled TUC Congress in October 2022 where it became the policy of the TUC

The Disability Employment Charter is something that we should encourage trade union branches to campaign on by adopting motions in support of the Disability Employment Charter at their Branch meetings as well as putting the Disability Employment Charter onto the negotiating agenda to encourage all employers to adopts its provisions.

The Disability Employment Charter calls for a number of things including:

• Employment and pay gap reporting

• Supporting disabled people into employment

• Reform of Access to Work to make it available for those seeking work

• Reform of Disability Confident

• Working with disabled people and their representatives

• Reasonable Adjustments otherwise known as Workplace Adjustments

Let me take each of these points in turn and provide a bit more detail:

Employment and pay gap reporting

The government should require all employers with 250+ employees to publish data annually on: the number of disabled people they employ as a proportion of their workforce; their disability pay gap; and the percentage of disabled employees within each pay quartile

Supporting disabled people into employment

The government should: increase disabled people’s access to employment programmes and apprenticeships; increase the scale, quality and awareness of supported employment programmes and supported internships; and increase the provision of tailored careers advice to disabled people.

Reform of Access to Work (AtW)

The government should: remove the Access to Work support cap; ensure application/renewal processes are efficient, personalised, and flexible; entitle disabled job-seekers to ‘in principle’ indicative awards; facilitate passporting of awards between organisations and from Disabled Student’s Allowance to Access to Work; and increase awareness of both employers and disabled people of the Access to Work support

Reform of Disability Confident

The government should: require all employers at Disability Confident Levels 2 and 3 to meet minimum thresholds regarding the percentage of disabled people in their workforce; and remove accreditation from employers that do not move up within 3 years from Level 1 to Levels 2 or 3.

Currently the reality is that 1 in 3 Disability Confident Employers Do Not employ any disabled people

Working with disabled people and their representatives

The government should: require employers to consult and negotiatewith disabled people and their representatives on disability equality matters; and provide trade union equality representatives and disability champions with statutory rights to time off to perform their role.

Reasonable Adjustments otherwise known as Workplace Adjustments 

The government should: require employers to notify employees on decisions regarding reasonable adjustment requests within two weeks; make the option to work flexibly from day one the legal default for all jobs; introduce stronger rights to paid disability leave for assessment, rehabilitation and training; and fund an increase in Statutory Sick Pay to the European average.

The Disability Employment Charter is extremely important to disabled workers. The reality is that disabled people and disabled workers have been treated as second class citizens for too long. There are many reports produced by the TUC and other unions that underline this. But let me give you a good example. In October 2022, Matthew Smith, leading expert on accessible transport quit his role as a government adviser after accusing ministers of backing policies on de-staffing the rail network that discriminate against disabled rail passengers, and ignoring his committee’s advice.

The reality is that if the de-staffing of the rail network goes ahead then some disabled workers will either have to find alternative ways of getting to work or potentially losing their jobs and careers. Whilst the campaign to prevent the closure of the ticket offices was successful a number of the railway operators are now closing ticket offices through the back door by reducing the opening hours.

As disabled workers we face problems in our workplace and whilst a number of trade unions are promoting disability awareness amongst their members we need to raise the level of awareness in every workplace so that we can put an end to discrimination against disabled workers and the unfair treatment highlighted in the TUC Report.

The Disability Employment Charter enables us to get the issues affecting our disabled members onto the negotiating agenda.

We need to give Disabled Workers a voice and we need to remove the fears that many disabled workers face of discrimination in the workplace. In recent years it has become acceptable to admit that you have a mental health problem. Now it must become acceptable for all disabled workers to self-identify as disabled.

We should remember that most disabled people become disabled during their working life.

What Can You Do?

I would suggest that if you are a member of a trade union that you could do some, or all, of the following. If you are not a member of a trade union then you could do numbers 4. and 5. on the list below - if you can, then please join a trade union.

1. Table a motion at your Trade Union Branch meeting supporting the Disability Employment Charter – see sample motion at the end of this presentation

2. Require your negotiators to include the Disability Employment Charter on the workplace negotiating agenda

3. Ensure the Branch and workplace negotiators invite your employer to become a signatory of the Disability Employment Charter

4. Persuade your employer to work with your trade union to organise Equalities Awareness Days

5. Persuade your employer to provide meaningful Equality & Diversity Training for all employees

6. Ensure that your branch has a Branch Equalities Officer

If you would more information about the Disability Employment Charter please follow the link to the Disability Employment Charter website

Disability Employment Charter.pdf

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