ILPC 2026

It is widely recognised that the estimated 16 percent of the European working population with disabilities continue to suffer labour market discrimination. For example, unemployment rates are two to three times higher among disabled people despite increased legal rights in recent years (ETUC-EDF, 2007). Given this, trade unions have a potentially important role to play in protecting disabled members’ jobs and encouraging employers to recruit and support disabled employees, thereby helping governments promote the social inclusion of disabled people and meet their obligations under the new UN Convention on the rights of disabled people.

An important aspect of recent trade union activity on disability issues has been to increase the capacity of union representatives to help disabled people. This became TUC policy in 2005, alongside other actions such as promoting disability audits. A key focus has been the provision of support for the recruitment and training of disability champions. These are new types of union representatives whose specific role is to raise awareness of disability issues, conduct disability audits, support employee requests for reasonable adjustments, handle disability-related discipline and grievance cases, influence recruitment procedures and recruit disabled workers to unions. Over 1,000 disability champions had been trained by May 2008 (TUC 2008, p. 146).

This paper will provide a preliminary assessment of the role and impact of disability champions drawing on data from a 2010 survey of the disability champion population. The first aim of the analysis will be to consider the extent to which disability champions have been successful in influencing employer disability practice. Existing theories of union effects suggest several reasons why one might expect such effects. For example, disability champions will arguably amplify union collective voice /institutional response effects (Freeman and Medoff 1984) by ensuring that disability issues are established on the union bargaining agenda (Heery 2006: 538) and by engaging employers in informal dialogue on disability matters. In addition, disability reps may generate ‘facilitation effects’ (Budd and Mumford, 2004). Here, the provision of information on disability rights, support for members’ investigations of discrimination complaints and representation of members within grievance procedures may bring discrimination and harassment problems to employers’ attention, and they may subsequently respond by improving disability practice to prevent problems re-emerging.

The second aim will be to conduct a multivariate analysis to assess the factors associated with disability rep effectiveness. This will be carried out with reference to the ‘Activity-Support-Characteristics’ framework developed elsewhere (Bacon and Hoque, 2010), by identifying whether disability rep effectiveness is dependent on the extent to which they: engage in activities likely to generate voice and facilitation effects; receive certain elements of support from both management and their unions; and have the training and experience necessary to perform the role effectively. This analysis will have a number of theoretical and policy implications. Importantly, it will also help identify ways in which the disability champion initiative might be best supported in the future.