Drivers and passenger assistants, who take disabled children to and from school in Hackney, have voted unanimously to strike over the failure of the council to make a one-off £500 Covid-19 payment…Read more…
Suspend London Dial-a-Ride service call after driver dies
Following the tragic death of Unite member Patrick David last weekend from Covid-19, Unite is demanding that Transport for London’s Dial-a-Ride service, for which Mr David worked, be temporarily…Read more…
‘Enough is enough’
Hackney council is being blamed for four days of planned strikes by drivers and passenger escorts on the school buses for disabled children in a dispute over payments for working split shifts. …Read more…
Fight to keep school bus
Leeds Unite Community activists have won another victory in their campaign to ensure the continued running of school transport for disabled children in the area. Leeds City Council (LCC) last year…Read more…
‘Hostile environment’
Tens of thousands of sick and disabled people are owed more than £1bn in back benefits after they were underpaid by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). The DWP said an “historic error”…Read more…
Stop Universal Credit call
Thousands of disabled people on Universal Credit could be paid damages after two severely disabled men who were treated unlawfully while receiving the benefit received compensation. Following…Read more…
‘Human catastrophe’
The treatment of disabled people under the Tories is a “human catastrophe” the United Nations has said. In a damning indictment, the UN Committee on the rights of disabled people said that…Read more…
‘Appalling treatment’
HGV drivers employed by the Co-op at its West Thurrock distribution depot have begun balloting for industrial action over the ‘appalling treatment’ of their disabled colleagues. The workers,…Read more…
Left all alone
More than two thirds of English councils have cut vital care packages for disabled people since the government scrapped the Independent Living Fund (ILF) in favour of paying local authorities…Read more…
My life in austerity Britain
Speaking from her own personal experience disability rights activist and actor Liz Carr (pictured left) told Sunday’s (September 25) Real Britain fringe about what it’s real like to have disabilities…Read more…
Have your say on Personal Independence Payments
The Department for Work and Pensions is undertaking a review of Personal Independence Payments (PIP). If you have applied for PIP in the past, you can fill in their questionnaire here to submit your…Read more…
‘An inconsequential little protest’
Graeme Ellis didn’t expect that a very personal gesture of protest would help pave the way for the government’s budget u-turn on cuts to disabled people
The article ‘An inconsequential little…Read more…
Climbdown
The Prime Minister was forced into a humiliating climb down yesterday (March 21) on plans announced in the Budget to reduce the deficit by cutting personal independence payments (PIP) for disabled…Read more…
Disability cuts – a warped sense of priorities
The government’s decision to slash Personal Independence Payments (PIP) whilst giving a tax cut to those earning comfortably more than the average UK salary shows a warped sense of priorities.
The…Read more…
Axe the Tax
A move by the Court of Appeal declaring the Bedroom tax unlawful has been greeted by Unite as a “significant step forward.” Judges in London ruled that in two separate cases – those of…Read more…
Breaking down barriers
For our last part in UNITElive’s series for Disability History Month this, we speak to Marsha de Cordova who explains how people with disabilities are being shortchanged by employers and the…Read more…
Injustice for disabled workers
Unite delegate Ian Lidbetter today (Tuesday, September 15) addressed TUC on disabled people and our welfare state. “When the reality of the general election result gradually sunk in in…Read more…
Cameron’s Equality appointments: the latest Whitehall Farce
Equalities has always been central to my trade unionism: if we are not about equality, then we are nothing.
The new Tory Government has said that it thinks equality (other than economic equality, of…Read more…
A Hero No Longer Forgotten
EDWARD RUSHTON (1756-1814)
IT is just a few years since I heard about Edward Rushton, Liverpool’s blind poet, anti-slavery campaigner and radical revolutionary.
Born in John Street, Liverpool, in…Read more…