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"People in Glass Houses"
TUDA Fringe meeting, TUC Disability Conference, 25 May 2005
Speech by Ju Gosling: Until five years ago, I'd spent the whole of my working life as an active trade unionist and a proud member of the NUJ. At various times I'd been a branch commitee member, an Industrial Council member, an Ethics Council member, Chair of my union's Equality Council, and founder of the Disability Working Party which later became our Disabled Members Council. But five years ago I became a wheelchair user, and almost immediately I became a pariah within my union.
The NUJ were holding their annual conference on the west coast of Ireland, and I needed a certain amount of support in order to be able to attend. Six months previously the Disability Discrimination Act had been extended to cover trade unions, and I was entitled to ask my union to make reasonable adjustments so that the conference was accessible to me. But in fact my union had committed itself to making all of its conferences and events accessible to disabled members as far back as 1989, so I had every confidence that this would be done.
What I didn't realise was that, in fact, I was the first wheelchair user ever to attend an annual conference. The union had never turned the conference motions on disability rights into policy, nor had they trained their staff on how to implement them. They had never briefed the staff on their responsibilities under the Disability Discrimination Act, nor had they provided the staff with disability equality training. In 1998 the Disabled Members Council had commissioned a consultant to advise the union on how to achieve disability equality, but their recommendations had never been implemented.
Thompsons solicitors later described what happened to me at the conference as being a series of cock-ups. The combination of an only partially accessible venue and inaccessible conference arrangements meant that I needed far more support than I would have done if the conference had been fully accessible. At the same time, the staff member who'd been assigned to support me was largely unavailable. To make matters worse, the union had forgotten to tell the hotel about my dietary requirements. By the afternoon of the second day I became so ill that I had to be flown home, and my health has never fully recovered.
The final cock-up came over my wheelchair. Because the majority of powered wheelchairs are damaged during air travel, I had asked the union to transport my chair to and from the conference in their minibus. But instead they left it behind in Ireland, and when it was finally returned to me by courier, I discovered that it was badly damaged. Although the union had promised to insure the chair during transit, they had forgotten to do this too, and it was four months later before it was finally repaired. The wheelchair had offered me the first opportunity to be fully mobile in ten years, and I was absolutely devastated.
Following the conference, I wrote a report to the Disabled Members Council, describing what had happened to me. I simply asked the national executive to follow the consultant's advice and give the staff disability equality training, in order to prevent the same thing from happening to anyone else. At the time of writing I had no doubt whatsoever that this would be done. I honestly believed that my union's management was committed to disability equality, would be shocked at what had happened to me, and would act accordingly.
But what happened instead was very different. The NUJ flatly denied that what I said was true. They said there had been no disability access problems at the conference, and that nobody else had complained. This was despite the fact that another disabled delegate, a Member of Honour, had made a speech to the whole conference complaining about the poor access. After that, the union sent me to Coventry.
Two months later, TUDA advised me to lodge a complaint under the Disability Discrimination Act as being the only way left to get the NUJ to take the matter seriously. However, the NUJ responded by continuing to insist that there hadn't been any access problems at the conference, and that nobody else had complained. Other NUJ members were told that I had gone mad, and ACAS were told by Thompsons solicitors that the union had no interest in talking to them about it either. Thompsons said that the union would rather hear what the Tribunal had to say about it, and for the next four years continued to refuse all attempts at conciliation.
It was very difficult to decide to proceed with the case. Tribunal cases don't qualify for legal aid, nor for no win, no fee arrangements, and of course I was denied the right to legal representation that my union membership would usually give me. So I would have to fight the whole case without a solicitor and without any money for expenses, at a time when I was still very unwell. Whereas the NUJ always had a barrister as well as a solicitor and clerk from Thompsons to argue their case against me.
I knew, too, that I would be condemned by non-disabled NUJ activists as being anti-union for taking the case, and this was very hard to bear. Ultimately, though, it came down to a moral choice. It would have been much easier to keep silent - after all, nothing could change what had already happened to me, and taking the case would only make my situation worse. But if I spoke out, it would be less likely to happen again to someone else. And according to my union's rule book, I am bound to fight discrimination and censorship, and to resist any form of intimidation. So with the support of other disabled people, I decided to continue.
The case finally came before the Tribunal in June 2001. However, it was immediately adjourned for seven months on human rights grounds, because the Tribunal ruled that Thompsons' conduct had put me at a considerable disadvantage in the preparation of my case. Thompsons had failed to follow the Tribunal's instructions to disclose their legal argument to me in advance of the hearing, so I had been unable to take advice on it. They had also provided me with copies of the conference tapes that were missing the speech by another disabled delegate complaining about the access.
The Tribunal were unanimous in their criticism of Thompsons's conduct as 'unsatisfactory' and described this as being a cause of great stress to me. The adjournment in turn prolonged the stress caused to me by the legal process. Despite this, Thompsons have never apologised to me. Although they state in all of their publicity that they only ever act for the victims of injury, as they later told the Law Society, this is not the case when the perpetrator is a trade union.
The case was only finally concluded last autumn, more than four years after the conference. In the process, Thompsons accused me of being a conwoman, and of not really being disabled at all. They told the Tribunal that someone as disabled as I claim to be could not possibly have won the bulk of the case with only the help of other disabled people. However, the NUJ were still found guilty of four counts of discrimination against me, two of them being described as major, and of personal injury.
Thompsons then described this as being trivial and not real discrimination, and as being unworthy of compensation. They also argued successfully that the NHS was to blame for the fact that my health has never fully recovered from the injury. I was very seriously ill for two months or more after the conference, and my GP concluded that someone had taken advantage of the access problems to spike my drink. But the Tribunal accepted Thompsons' argument that the discrimination on its own was enough to cause my symptoms, and that I had continued to be ill because my GP had upset me.
I was eventually awarded £8,000, about the average compensation in disability discrimination cases. All of this went to pay for the costs of the remedies part of the hearing. The union still refused to apologise, and have continued to tell its members that I am essentially mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Throughout the case they have seen themselves, and not me, as being the victim, and this hasn't changed yet. But I definitely did the right thing.
Because what has happened in the six months since the case ended? The NUJ have denied one member the support that she needed to participate fully in a residential conference, stating that she was not disabled enough to need personal assistance, and that if she did she should find a friend to volunteer. They only provided a p.a. for another member to attend annual conference after lengthy and protracted arguments, and advice to ask social services for help instead. In addition there have been further complaints from disabled NUJ members about unsuitable conference venues, and about conference arrangements that make it impossible for disabled members to participate fully. Most seriously of all, last month another wheelchair user was injured at annual conference because of the poor standards of access.
But why does any of this matter? Shouldn't we just accept that trade unions have more important things to do than worrying about whether their disabled members can participate fully in their meetings? Shouldn't we be grateful for anything that includes us, rather than complaining about the times when we are excluded, or when we can't participate on equal terms? Shouldn't we, as the NUJ said in their press release at the end of the case, get back to fighting real discrimination within the workplace?
But refusing to let us participate in our unions on equal terms is real discrimination. And the truth is that, until we can participate fully within trade union activities, we have no chance whatsover of educating trade unions to represent our interests effectively within the workplace. Likewise, until we are models of good practices ourselves, our efforts within the workplace will have no credibility. So until we can achieve equality within our unions, disabled workers will continue to suffer.
As it stands, the vast majority of disabled people find that their requests for help from their union are met either by blank incomprehension, or by advice to ask someone else, or by misleading and inaccurate advice, or by a straightforward refusal to help. Often they are advised that they have no reasonable prospects of winning a Tribunal case, even when this is not actually true. No wonder that less than one in 20 disability discrimination claims lodged at Tribunals succeed, and no wonder that we suffer from mass unemployment.
The reality is that, despite some excellent pockets of work being done, by disabled activists in particular, the vast majority of the trade union movement still remains almost entirely ignorant of what disability discrimination is, how it manifests itself and what needs to be done to challenge it, both within the workplace and within the unions themselves. Even the information about disabled workers’ rights on the Thompsons website is wrong although it claims to be up to date, as it says that employers can justify their failure to make reasonable adjustments when this actually ceased to be the case last October. Disabled trade unionists therefore have little chance of finding out exactly what their rights are, particularly as the Disability Rights Commission has an official policy of refusing to help trade union members.
We need to move, very rapidly indeed, to a situation where each and every trade union member with a disability related employment issue can receive informed help within the workplace as soon as they need it. We need all trade unions to prioritise the interests of disabled people when they negotiate contracts and working conditions, and to take concerted action to protect disabled workers’ rights. We need trade unions to recognise that individual cases have an impact far beyond that individual, and to pursue discriminatory employers vigorously through the courts when all else fails. We need nothing less than a cultural revolution, and we need it to start right here, and right now.
So what is the solution? As a beginning, the Trade Union Disability Alliance is launching the Trade Union Charter for Disability Equality, asking trade unions to make an explicit commitment to fulfil the recommendations made in the Disability Discrimination Act Code of Practice within a social model of disability context. And we also need to demand a much higher quality of service from our unions’ legal advisers. We need to demand that all lawyers working on behalf of trade unions receive Disability Equality Training, as well as specialised training on the disability legislation including the changes made last October and the new 2005 Act. We need to demand that our unions receive accurate and detailed information and guidance on how to fulfil their legal obligations to disabled staff and members. And we need to ensure that this work is led by appropriately qualified experts, rather than by lawyers whose specialisms actually lie elsewhere. We also need to ensure that personal injury cases are coordinated with disability discrimination cases, in order that the price of compensation is not unemployment.
No one should have to go through the experiences I’ve just described in order to challenge discriminatory treatment within their union. No one should be left unemployed because they did not have the support of their union to challenge the discrimination they faced in the workplace. No more young people should grow up knowing that, however well they do in education, they are unlikely ever to work because their interests have not been represented. No one should have to go to desperate lengths every day to avoid anyone knowing they are disabled, or feel that they would rather die than become disabled. I didn’t want to take the first disability discrimination case against a union, but I would like to have taken the last.
Click here to read the full story of Ju's case.
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