NEU Conference update – April 2025
As Staffordshire’s Disabled Members Officer I was present at conference this year. Some amazing motions were discussed with wonderful well researched speeches both for and against different motions.
A motion I was very excited about was Motion 20, a motion which discussed the importance of disability leave to ensure disabled teachers are not discriminated against in the workplace. This motion discussed how disabled workers can need time off for reasons relating to their impairment and how disability leave is intended to help with this. The motion states that employers have a duty under UK employment law to make reasonable adjustments for disabled workers with a disability or long term health condition.
We voted unanimously to pass this motion at conference. This means we have voted for training on how to use the NEU disability equality toolkit to help encourage implementation in the workplace. We voted for schools to hold workplace meetings to discuss the toolkit and to meet management and discuss how to implement a disability leave policy in their workplace. Finally, the motion also instructed conference and executives to encourage branches to support reps and members with ballots for industrial action where schools refuse to implement disability leave policies.
I have added the Disability equality toolkit to this post and also aim to run a session on the toolkit at our upcoming Big Weekend.
I am really excited to roll this out throughout Staffordshire and my aim for 2025 is to ensure that reps are able to adequately support our disabled members and advocate for our rights. One of the amendments that were agreed at conference, created by our Waltham Forest District, added to the motion… “Conference believes the union needs to lead in the fight for disabled educators rights.” and I could not agree more.
Commenting on the passing of motion 20 at Annual Conference in Harrogate, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said:
“We need to recruit and retain disabled workers in the education sector. Yet for far too many, punitive policies are driving them out. Every workplace should have a disability leave policy alongside a sickness absence policy so that education workers are not penalised for being Disabled.
“With the proposed benefit cuts to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Universal Credit alongside uncertainty about Access to Work provision, many Disabled educators are rightly feeling worried about being able to remain in work and doing the jobs they are committed to.
“The government needs to listen to workers and change their planned benefit cuts, or the recruitment and retention crisis we have in education will only get worse. Committed professionals will be driven from, not into, work.”