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Attention: Industrial, disability and legal correspondents

law change could help get one million disabled people into work

The TUC is today (Wednesday) asking trade union members to sign a petition calling for the government to introduce a new law to provide equal rights for disabled people and correct the weaknesses of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The government has announced it intends to introduce a new Bill and the TUC are urging them to begin consultation as soon as possible so that the law is in force no later than 2004.

In 1999, the Disability Rights Task Force recommended 156 changes to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the TUC believes the new Bill is the best means of making the large number of remaining improvements, the most important being:

• broadening the definition of disability to include those unfairly outside of the law’s protection, particularly people with mental health problems.
• removing the unjustified exemptions from disability discrimination law for a range of particular jobs, as well as for firms with fewer than 15 employees
• close the loophole established in a recent court decision that allows employers to discriminate on the grounds of disability as long as they have justified their decision, even if the justification is flawed.

Brendan Barber, TUC General Secretary Elect, said:

'The number and proportion of disabled people in work is slowly increasing but there are still over one million unemployed disabled people who want to work. The discrimination that pushes disabled unemployment rate up to double that of non-disabled must be made illegal as quickly as possible. Our petition calls for urgent government action during this European Year of Disabled People.'

If you would like to help collect signatures, you can download a pdf copy of the petition here.

Notes to Editors:

All statistics are from the Labour Force Survey Summer 2002.

All TUC press releases can be found at www.tuc.org.uk

Disabled workers can find out about their rights at work at www.workSMART.org.uk, the TUC working life website.

Contacts:

Media enquiries: Ben Hurley 020 7467 1248 or 07626 317903 (pager) or email bhurley@tuc.org.uk

Press release (400 words) issued 2 Apr 2003