Employers must turn their “ambitions” into real improvements for disabled workers
The NUJ called for the TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference to hold “employers’ feet to the fire”.
Mandatory reporting by employers of the disability pay gap must be introduced, the conference was told by NUJ delegate Johny Cassidy. He said:
“It is widely known that disabled workers earn around about 20 per cent less than their non-disabled colleagues, and for disabled women that goes up drastically to 36 per cent. Lots of employers really love to say they are ambitious to get more disabled people in to work. You know, it is just that it has to be a lot more than that. Ambition does not pay the rent.”
Johny said this was even more important as the cost of living crisis will hit disabled people hard.
He made reference to The Fifth Cut: Diamond at 5, the latest report from the Creative Diversity Network (CDN), the industry body which is monitoring diversity on and off-screen within the UK’s television industry which said: “There appears to be nowhere in the industry where disabled people thrive.”
The report found:
- Representation by disabled people on and off-screen has remained consistently lower across all genres, all broadcasters, and all job roles than the 18 per cent of the UK population who declare a disability.
- Disabled people are still making fewer than 6 per cent of contributions across most senior roles. Over the past three years there has been a decrease in contributions by disabled people in the roles of director, producer-director, and producer.
The CDN said that at the current rate of progress, it would take until 2028 to achieve the aim of doubling the percentage of disabled people working off-screen, and a further 20 years before the industry reaches representation levels that match the UK population. Johny said:
“The bottom line from the findings of Project Diamond is that there has been no meaningful improvement in the employment of disabled people by the major broadcasters. I really think conference needs to hold employers to account and make them turn their 'ambitions' into concrete numbers of people coming into the industry and find the metrics to measure their progress.”
Disabled workers earning a fifth less than non-disabled peers - TUC analysis reveals (31 Oct 2020)