The law, discrimination and your rights

Disabled workers have legal protection against discrimination through the Equality Act 2010 (which absorbed most of the previous Disability Discrimination Act) but the reality is that too many continue to face discrimination, prejudice and stigma. The employment rate for working age disabled people continues to run at 30 per cent lower than for non-disabled people and once in work, many disabled people find themselves in lower paid jobs and unable to progress a career. Even when recruitment levels are high, many disabled workers find themselves driven out of their jobs through draconian sickness procedures that fail to recognise that these procedures ought to be subject to reasonable adjustments to take account of disability-related absences.  Mental ill health (which may count as a disability in law) is at epidemic levels (2015) and once off work, a very small proportion of people with mental ill health find their way back into employment. The TUC continues to campaign in all these areas.

The TUC argues for improvements in legal protection but also for better employer practice by publishing advice and guidance for union members and representatives in many areas. Some of these are listed below. The TUC supports the social model of disability and argues for an approach based on removing barriers to participation, but the law and popular culture remain rooted in the medical model: it remains necessary therefore to demonstrate to most employers that you are covered by the law by showing how “disabled” you are, that is, that you cannot carry out a variety of day to day tasks and that your condition is long-term. If you are disabled, the primary duty on the employer is to carry out “reasonable adjustments” to enable you to carry out the work (which to be reasonable must achieve that goal and not cost an amount unreasonable for the employer).

The Equality Act also consolidated the Public Sector Equality Duty that put additional equality obligations on public bodies and those delivering public services. Since the cuts to public services that began in 2010 it has been increasingly difficult to use these rights to promote better practice for anyone protected by anti-discrimination law but the TUC published advice on how the Duty could be deployed. TUC Equality Duty Toolkit [PDF]

The TUC always recommends that unions seek improvements in employer policies to identify and remove barriers, rather than resort to tribunal proceedings to enforce the law. Advice on good practice as well as legal rights is contained in the TUC publication “Disability and Work” [link] which can be downloaded here.

For advice on work problems you can visit the website of the Equality and Human Rights Commission www.equalityhumanrights.com/your-rights/employment/dealing-discrimination, or call the helpline run by EASS at 0808 800 0082.

Other advice

The TUC has also published advice on the following subjects:

• Sickness absence and disability discrimination [PDF]
• Representing and supporting members with mental health problems at work [PDF]
• Epilepsy at work (available soon)
• Autism in the workplace [PDF]
• Dyslexia in the workplace [PDF]