TUC Disabled Workers Committee

These are the opening speeches from this event, held on Zoom on Tuesday 22 March 2022.

Sarah Woolley (General Secretary, Bakers’, Food and Allied Workers’ Union): Welcome to the joint RMT and Free Our Unions TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference fringe meeting.

TUC Disabled Workers’ Committee strongly opposes the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

The Bill includes new duties which oblige public services to share service users’ information with the police, which is an unacceptable shift away from a public health approach to an authoritarian approach, which will erode trust between public services and disabled people.

The TUC's Disabled Members' Committee has made this statement: Accessible public transport is essential for disabled people to participate in society on an equal and independent basis. To be genuinely accessible, public transport must be adequately staffed by workers with decent standards of training, pay, conditions and security of employment.

Janine's opening remarks at the TUC Disabled Workers' Conference panel discussion on Accessibility As Standard Not 'As Required': building accessible workplaces for all, on Monday 21 March 2022.

Which is better?

A. A wheelchair user arrives at their new workplace, enters it and starts work.

This was the first full meeting of the committee elected in March. It elected Dave Allan as chair (a formality as he is the disabled workers’ representative on the TUC General Council); and Annie Galpin as co-chair.

Implementing Disabled Workers’ Conference decisions

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.