TUC Disabled Workers' Committee

This is what Janine said in the debate about Reasonable Adjustments for Disabled Workers at the TUC Disabled Workers' Conference on 11 March 2021.

I’ll start with what might be a provocative statement:

Reasonable adjustments for individual workers are Plan B. Plan A is an accessible workplace.

This is the text of my contribution to the debate at TUC Disabled Workers' Conference on 10 March 2019.

Hi. I'm Janine Booth, representing RMT. Our members work in the rail, road transport, shipping and offshore energy industries.

Accessible Transport

I will be convening the committee’s accessible transport working group, which will also include Elane Heffernan (UCU), Colleen Johnson (NEU) and Austin Harney (PCS).

We already have a campaign plan, which will now be updated.

The Committee agreed to support RMT DMAC’s day of action against London Overground ticket office cuts on 1 November.

Disabled Workers’ Conference decisions

We considered how to best carry out the decisions of the TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference. We agreed that the most effective way to do this was by establishing working groups on various policy areas. Committee members volunteered to convene groups, and a circular will be sent out asking other Committee members to volunteer to join these groups.

Janine proposing a motion condemning deaths of autistic and learning disabled people in care, at TUC Disabled Workers' Conference in May 2019.

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On 21 March this year, an inquest ruled that the death of Colette McCulloch was avoidable.

Colette was thirty-five years old when she died. She was autistic, and in a hostile society, she had become mentally unwell.

This is Janine's speech seconding the motion on the Trade Union Act at TUC Disabled Workers' Conference 2019. The motion was passed unanimously.

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RMT welcomes PCS’ motion and its focus on electronic balloting. Our amendment extends this discussion to the rest of the Trade Union Act and to the rest of the anti-union laws.

Under UK law, we can not take lawful industrial action except in so-called ‘trade disputes’:

The final motion at this year’s TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference was on Learning Disability. As this is an important and neglected issue, and the motion made some good points, it was clearly going to pass. However, I thought it important to point out some problems with it. Contributions to the debate were limited to three minutes, so this is probably more blunt and less nuanced than it might have been!

1. TUC Disabled Workers' Conference, 24-25 May, Bournemouth

• Motions - The Committee agreed to to support all motions and amendments, except:
  • Unison's amendment to Unite's motion on Universal Credit (oppose) - the motion opposes UC; the amendment wants to change this to reforming it
  • POA's motion on mental health discrimination (oppose) - the Committee can not support the Time To Change campaign, as it is run by Mind, which collaborates with the DWP
  • Community's motion on sustainable supported employment (decision deferred) - the motion proposes promoting a particular company as 'best practice' for the employment of disabled people - we need more information before endorsing this

TUC DISABLED WORKERS’ CONFERENCE 2018

Venue accessibility: We noted our success in getting the TUC to change the conference location to an accessible venue. We looked at the detailed access statement for the venue, and I asked that a relaxation space be allocated for the use of conference attendees.