Joanne Thomas – Usdaw general secretary says: “Disabled people face a higher risk of poverty, driven by structural discrimination, the failure of employers and others to implement reasonable adjustments, and the continued dominance of medical model thinking. We reject any suggestion that this is inevitable and assert that disabled people’s poverty and ongoing inequality are entirely preventable.
“Despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, cutting disabled people’s social security continues to be pursued as a strategy for getting disabled people into work. Restricting eligibility and removing entitlement to disability and sickness benefits does nothing to improve access to paid employment. Quite the reverse; it pushes disabled people further away from the labour market and deeper into poverty.”
Usdaw is calling for the Labour Government to take a strategic and preventative approach to disabled people’s poverty by dealing with the long-term drivers, including:
- Reviewing, in meaningful consultation with unions, disabled people and disabled people’s organisations, the adequacy of all disability and ‘incapacity’ benefits and related premiums, with a view to improving them.
- Strengthening the duty to make reasonable adjustments - and its enforcement.
- Pressing Government to lead by example by embedding the social model in their approach to policy and decision making.
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 with around 370,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also represents many workers in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades www.usdaw.org.uk
For Usdaw press releases visit: www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Bluesky @usdawunion.bsky.social and Twitter/X @UsdawUnion