Disability Employment Charter

The impact of the Coronavirus pandemic saw disabled people being hit hard by the crisis and continue to be so.  In the workplace, the sporadic way in which reasonable adjustments have been implemented has left many disabled workers unable to participate fully in work while being more likely to be made redundant, added to this is the growing disability pay gap that currently stands at 16.5% according to the TUC.   The Disability Employment Charter sets out concrete aims and objectives to redressing the current imbalance and is in response (in part) to the government's National Disability Strategy.

Endorsed by UCU's Disabled Members' Standing Committee, we are pleased to announced that UCU has added its name to the Disability Employment Charter (www.disabilityemploymentcharter.org), created to put pressure on the government to end discrimination in the workplace against disabled people.  

The time for action is now.  We encourage branches to speak with employers and ask them to sign up to the Charter.  Developed by Disabled people, Disabled People's Organisations (DPO's), charities and trades union, the Charter addresses nine key areas for improving the working lives of disabled people:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Reform of Access to Work (AtW).The government should: remove the AtW 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 AtW; and increase awareness of AtW support.
4. 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.
5. Leveraging government procurement.The government should: ensure award decisions for all public sector contracts take into account the percentage of disabled people in the workforce of tendering organisations; require government contractors to work towards a minimum threshold regarding the percentage of disabled people in their workforce; and take failure to achieve this threshold into account in future contract award decisions.
6. 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 Statutory Sick Pay to the European average.
7. Working with disabled people and their representatives. The government should: require employers to consult and negotiate with 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.
8. Advice and support.The government should create a 'one stop shop' portal to provide information, advice and guidance to employers on recruiting and retaining disabled people, and to disabled people on their employment rights.
9. National progress on disability employment. The government should take into account increasing disability prevalence in calculating the disability employment gap, and use the 'prevalence in calculating the disability employment gap measure in monitoring national progress on disability employment.