Dying to work campaign

Conference notes that the Equality Act provides protections against discriminatory treatment
based on the concept of ‘Protected Characteristics’. Currently workers with a terminal illness
are not classifi ed as having a protected characteristic and therefore have very limited legal
protection against employers dismissing them due to illness.

Conference notes that employers are therefore free to dismiss terminally ill workers once they
have made ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the employee’s job to assist with the illness.
Conference agrees that the last thing a terminally ill worker would need is the distress at the
same time as facing up to a terminal illness is to have to fi ght for the right to continue working
and not to face the indignity of being sacked. In addition Conference notes that the loss of death
in service benefi ts to terminally ill workers sacked before death is a further distress at a time
when security for a family for the future should be protected.

Therefore Conference agrees to support the TUC’s ‘Dying to Work Campaign’ currently being
developed in the Midlands and to support the lobbying of MP’s to establish new legislation,
currently being drawn up by the Society of Labour Lawyers which;

• Seeks to get terminally ill workers covered by Protective Rights at Work in line with those
covered by Pregnancy/ Maternity Rights
• Seeks to protect death in service benefi ts
• Seeks to allow workers with terminal illness to die with dignity.
Conference instructs all local Brigade Offi cials to raise the TUC’s ‘Dying to Work Campaign’ with
the relevant people within their Fire and Rescue Service as a matter of urgency with the view to
having their Fire and Rescue Service signed up to the charter by Conference 2018.

WEST MIDLANDS AS AMENDED BY MERSEYSIDE