Paddy Lillis – Usdaw general secretary says: “The social model of disability is fundamental to eliminating discrimination and achieving equality and inclusion for disabled people. Despite its significance, the medical model continues to dominate the law and the way in which employers and the general public understand and respond to disabled workers. This maintains and condones continued exclusion and inequality.
 
“Overall, employers focus almost exclusively on ‘adjusting’ the worker and rarely on adjusting the workplace and removing barriers. This reinforces the widespread stereotype of disabled people as creating a ‘burden on business’, putting the onus on the disabled worker to demonstrate what they can’t do, rather than on employers to make workplaces accessible. This ‘individualises’ disabled workers’ responses to discrimination and pushes them into seeking justice via internal grievance and legal procedures where the odds are stacked against them.”
 
Usdaw is asking the TUC to encourage unions to:

• Make collective bargaining on disability equality a priority, including ensuring all reps and officials are trained on the social model.
• Regularly review employers’ policies, practices and publications, ensuring they are free of medical model approaches to disability.
• Hold employers to account for failures in their duty to make reasonable adjustments. 

Notes for editors:
 
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is one of the fastest growing unions in the TUC and the UK's fifth biggest trade union with around 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades www.usdaw.org.uk
 
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter @UsdawUnion