Nothing About Us Without Us

This year’s Disabled Workers Conference was well attended with over 200 delegates representing 30 different trade unions. Unsurprisingly, the Unite delegation was the largest at the conference and our delegates spoke in many of the debates.

The Conference opened with a speech from the Chair of the TUC Disabled Workers Committee, Martyn Gwyther of Unite. This was followed by an online speech from Sir Stephen Timms, the Minister for Social Security and Disability. During his speech he tried to convince us that only 1 in 10 people receiving PIP will lose PIP.

At the fringe meeting on the lunchtime Andy Mitchell of Unite Community and DPAC responded to this by saying 

“Earlier we had Stephen Timms here and he tried to paint a positive picture about these cuts, saying only 1 in 10 will be affected and that it will help disabled people get into work. Let’s be clear these cuts are not about fairness or efficiency; they are not about the economy or improving productivity. These cuts are vicious and cruel and they will devastate people lives. I am one of the people set to lose out. I don’t know yet how bad it will affect me, but it could be up to £9,000.”

During the evening reception we heard many delegates expressing their anger and disgust at the speech from Sir Stephen Timms and suggesting that if there is a Government speaker next year we should get up and walk out. 

The second day started with the Unite motion ‘Tackling Disability Discrimination and Ableism’. The subject of ableism has not always been properly addressed at the TUC Disabled Workers Conference, but this year it was. The Unite motion was moved by Craig Duerden who spoke of the challenges faced by disabled people especially the ableist attitudes of non-disabled people.

It was good to see that ableism was also mentioned in some of the other motions and a number of the speeches at the conference.

So what do we mean by ableism?

Ableism is a set of beliefs that views disability as bad and normality as good. In reality ableism is discrimination and prejudice against people with disabilities based on the idea that people with ‘typical’ abilities are superior. It is discrimination in favour of able-bodied people.

Many members of the Unite delegation spoke and it was fantastic to see so many first time speakers at the Conference both from Unite and the other unions. One of those first time speakers was Unite’s Danielle Uttley, who actually spoke on two motions. She spoke about her personal experience of not being fully supported whilst at school. She also highlighted the need to make all rail accessible. She pointed out that despite the successful campaign to prevent the closure of ticket offices they are now being closed through the back door through constantly reducing opening times.

Unite submitted an emergency motion called ‘Disabled Workers Oppose Welfare Reforms’. A number of other unions submitted similar motions and these were merged or composited into Composite Emergency Motion 1 which was carried at the conference. It was also fantastic to find out that this motion had been selected as the Motion to go forward from the TUC Disabled Workers Conference to this year’s TUC Congress.

The TUC Disabled Workers Conference did raise the profile of issues affecting disabled workers but the frustration that was expressed throughout the conference was that there was not a single union leader standing up for disabled people by publicly challenging the Government’s cuts to disability benefits which could actually result in more disabled people not being able to work because they had withdrawn vital support.

Unite has a disabled members page here.

By Kevin Daws, Branch Equality Officer, Gloucester SW/007 Branch