The Newcastle Conference

Janet Seymour Kirk chaired the conference and began by introducing the President of Amicus MSF Section, Dave Trafford. Dave talked about the project and how it fitted in with Amicus's broader equalities campaigning agenda. He welcomed the project and described it as "so simple", he talked of a vision of a Disability Champion in every workplace and the effect that could have on working people now and in the future. He told conference he had been horrified when Bert Massie of the Disability Rights Commission had told him that it would probably be the great grandchildren of today's children who may believe that society was truly built to enable people.

"This is about working people looking out for and helping working people; what else is trade unionism about" he concluded.

Our next speaker was North East Region MEP, Stephen Hughes. Stephen's speech followed nicely from Dave's as he focused upon the impact of Article 13 of the Amsterdam Treaty which calls upon all member states to introduce mandatory anti-discrimination programmes relating to five grounds including disability.

Stephen was very open and honest about some of the things that our Government are doing that he personally does not agree with but called upon the trade union movement to campaign to change policy from within the party. He commended the project and said how he looked forward to seeing expand to include members of all trade unions and offered his support.

Gail Cartmail spoke of the links between Disability Champions and our on going equal pay campaign. "Whenever pay schemes involve discretionary payments there is discrimination, not just on the grounds of gender but also due to disability". She told us that of the 6.8 million disabled people of working age in the UK 70% of these became disabled whilst in work; this is clearly an issue for all of us.

Gail quoted from the Scope publication, Ready Willing and Disabled, that shows that disabled people are half a likely to have a job than non disabled people. Disability Champions will have a key role to play in opening doors to employment from the inside, she said.

The final speaker of the morning was Dave Parr who presented an overview of the project and how it came to being. "we split into three workshops at Whitehall College last July with the remit of spending £50,000 to help disabled workers, two out of the three groups came up with the same idea, at that point I knew we were onto a winner" said Dave.

Dave said that the Disability Champions will have two key roles. They will have a reactive role handling members problems as they arise and also a proactive role working with their employer to make their workplace truly accessible. A starting point for this will be an audit against the "Two Ticks" criteria, particularly if their employer uses this symbol. Dave then gave a demonstration of this web site.

The Workshops

Workshop 1 - campaigning at work

Workshop 2 - overcoming obstacles

Workshop 3 - campaigning at work

Workshop 4 - seeking and sharing advice and support