Discrimination against disabled workers continues, and RMT is organising to oppose it
Despite several members being unavoidably absent, the meeting was well-attended and lively. We welcomed our newest Committee member, Tomas Bissett from Liverpool 5 branch.
NATIONAL EXECUTIVE REPORT
RMT representatives: Janine Booth, Jamie Parry
Unite had three representatives at the meeting, PCS one. The other unions - TSSA, ASLEF and Prospect - were not represented.
‘Safety Moment’
We raised the issue of sexual harassment, especially on Night Tube. Management responded that the Mayor’s office (Michele Dix and Amy Lame) had drawn up a charter for women’s safety at night. The unions expressed alarm that we had not been consulted about this. Management agreed to arrange for our involvement.
Subject: DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION – LONDON UNDERGROUND
That we note the resolution from our Bakerloo Line Branch and agree that its not enough for the company to portray themselves as a progressive equal opportunities employer to staff and publicly, if they allow their junior managers to regularly attempt to unpick agreed reasonable working adjustments for our member; which will have a potential impact on all our disabled members of staff.
We instruct the General Secretary to take up the matter in-line with the resolution:
by Janine Booth, RMT nominee on TUC Disabled Workers' Committee
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.
CARRYING OUT OUR 2019 PLAN
7 resolutions were passed at the National Disabled Members’ Conference this year. 2 were selected to the AGM (Reasonable Adjustments and Mental Health Awareness) and the other 5 were considered by the NEC.
i. Personality Testing
“The conference notes that:
RMT's Disabled Members' Conference, meeting in Plymouth on 27-28 April 2019, passed the following resolution, which had been submitted by Finsbury Park branch:
This conference notes that:
Equal Rights Sub-committee Report
We welcomed Lee Rundle (National Executive member for the South West region) to the meeting. Lee told us about his experiences as a dyslexic member, as well as reporting on the National Executive's decisions on our resolutions from our meeting in November, which were:
London Underground Ltd claims that the red 'Here to Help' tabards make staff more visible to passengers, especially to visually-impaired passengers. RMT argues that the only effective way to make staff more visible is to employ more staff.