According to the Disability Rights Commission one in seven of us in the UK is disabled. Apply that to our pre merger membership and that means 60,000 people: a simple remit really; change the world with a budget of 83p per head. The project became Disability Champions@Work and our bid was successful.
We saw a new role for trade union reps. A proactive role making workplaces truly enabling environments for workers and potential workers; a role that recognises and promotes the social model of disability and encourages employers to make reasonable adjustments, not because the Disability Discrimination Act says they have to, but because it is the right thing to do.
We have written a five day training cause and provided our champions with a support network and an interactive website so they can share ideas and innovations, tap into one another's specialist knowledge and, most importantly, share examples or real adjustments that have solved real problems for real people.
To promote the project our website went online in January 2003. We held conferences in Newcastle and Belfast and reps started to come forward to be Champions. By may we held our first training course. It was all going very well. My only concern was possible perception of the project by disabled people: would we be seen as another bright idea? Then along came Scope.
Scope's campaign manager is Margie Woodward. She spoke at our London conference and was very honest with us. She said that when she first heard about Disability Champions she did think 'here we go another initiative' but went on to say that she was delighted to find she was wrong as she learned more not just about what we were doing but how we were doing it. A natural partnership emerged. Disability Champions could address many of the issues highlighted by Scope's excellent report Ready, Willing and Disabled. She described the project as a 'breath of fresh air' particularly as it placed so much emphasis on the social model.
Promotion of the project went on. We held further conferences in London, Blackpool, Glasgow and Bristol. In fact we got on anybody's agenda that would listen to us. To date I have spoken to over 700 people. One thing has always been clear; this is not just about MSF, not just about Amicus but about all trade unions. The TUC are key partners. We have been invited to speak at events by the T&G, NUT and GPMU. As well as our own members we have trained Champions from Unison, PCS, GMB, ISTC, the list goes on.
So where are we now as we approach the end of our project? What have the European Union got for their money? Well, we have identified 94 Champions, 37 of them have completed their training, a further 28 are doing the course using a CD Rom and the project web site, we have spoken to over 700 people and our web site has had over 2500 visitors. Well that fine, but what about the disabled members we set out to help? There are a number of examples on the web site but let me pick one out. A member was returning to work at CIS Insurance after a long absence with severe depression. Her consultant said that she should work three days per week. Fine said CIS; three days work, three days pay and a part time contract. Disability Champion Dave Williams intervened and negotiated sick pay for the two days that she was unable to work. He tells me that she is now working four days and will be back to full five day working by April. Our Champions are out there and they are making a difference.
So what now? Well, in partnership with Scope we have secured funding for a second year of the project. We will be working with the TUC to make our project a part of the mainstream TUC Education programme delivered throughout the country and available to everyone. And why stop at disability? This is an equality issue. We will be looking at lessons learned from this project to see if we can apply similar methods to make progress on the wider equalities agenda making improvements for women and on issues of race, nationality, sexuality etc. Equality Reps deliver in the workplace. We will be campaigning for statutory right to negotiate on equality issues. When we have that right we will all be able to use our skills as trade unionists to make the Workplace a Fair Place.
We welcome this year's Disability Bill. It extends protection to millions of workers in small businesses and previously exempted occupations. But in organised workplaces we don't look to legislation to set our rates of pay or tell us how many days holiday we can have, we negotiate collective agreements. This project gives us the opportunity to do that on the equalities agenda.
It has been very difficult condensing 18 busy months into a few minutes and there's lots more I would like to tell you. I'm sure many of you have comments or questions so please collar me during the day or contact us via the web site or the contact details on the back page of our newsletter. I look forward to hearing from you.