Disabled activist seeks to lead union, and promises to fight discriminatory reporting if she wins

A disabled journalist has called on the trade union movement to do more for disability rights and has promised to fight discrimination across the media, if she is elected to be the next leader of her union.

Dr Natasha Hirst said she believed the trade union movement needed to be “much stronger” in challenging the “negative rhetoric” about disabled people, particularly when it comes to social security.

Hirst has spent years campaigning for equality for disabled people both within journalism and across the disabled people’s movement.

She is currently president of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ)* and is now hoping to be elected as its new general secretary, after the long-serving Michelle Stanistreet announced in June that she would be stepping down.

She is standing against just one other candidate, Laura Davison, who is currently a full-time NUJ official, leading the union’s broadcasting sector, having previously worked for BBC local radio.

Hirst told Disability News Service (DNS) this week: “Although we are trade unions and our role is to represent workers, we should show more solidarity with the wider disabled people’s movement in protecting those who can’t work and those who would like to work but can’t find supportive employers or suitable work.”

She also said she was “continually appalled by the lack of empathy and understanding” within government and its “willingness to scapegoat and punish disabled people who need support”.

She said that both the Access to Work scheme and jobcentres were “chronically under-resourced and riddled with systemic ableism”, while the “punitive” social security system “destroys lives”.

Hirst also told DNS that unions should be doing more for members with long Covid, and “should be attacking the hypocrisy of not supporting workers (and freelances) with long Covid” and the failure to do enough preventative work to keep infection rates down.

She said: “Changes to working patterns [during the pandemic] could have opened up more accessible and safer ways of working to create inclusion and opportunities for disabled workers and it is bitterly disappointing and dangerous for us that we are witnessing the ongoing disregard for our human rights.”

Hirst (pictured) also told DNS that she believed there were too few disabled people reaching senior levels within the union movement.

She praised her own union for its efforts to ensure access for her to key meetings and events “without fuss”, while NUJ’s greater use of online meetings since the pandemic had made its democratic processes “much more accessible for me”.

She said: “My presence and self-advocacy educates those around me and is slowly changing the culture of the union.

“There’s still a way to go, but without this support, I couldn’t have taken up the opportunities as an activist that led to me being president and thus in a position to stand for general secretary.

“It takes years to develop the skills and experience to go for a role like this.

“It demonstrates that it can be done but begs the question as to why there aren’t more disabled activists reaching the top across our union movement.”

One of her pledges is to push for increased NUJ membership by appealing to a “wider diversity” of potential members, such as disabled freelance journalists, and to show that the union understands the barriers faced by disabled freelances “and that we are serious about tackling those barriers”.

She also wants to address the barriers some disabled journalists face when trying to become an NUJ member, usually because of their low income and irregular work.

Her union activism in journalism has included involvement in the campaign to persuade the Independent Press Standards Organisation to extend protection from media discrimination for disabled people.

She believes her industry needs to “scrutinise government policies more effectively and deconstruct negative and distorted rhetoric about disabled people” and build “wider solidarity for a campaign against discriminatory reporting”.

Hirst says more must be done to educate journalists and on “tackling those who own the media and shape the editorial lines” when it comes to disability equality “and the complexities of navigating barriers in every area of life”.

She said: “A disabled person leading the NUJ has a better chance of pushing those messages out to challenge the status quo and prevent disabled people from being ‘othered’ by the union movement and by the media industry.”

She has also led the union’s #InclusivePressAccess campaign, which aims to persuade political parties, and now also sports bodies, to make their events and press conferences accessible to disabled journalists.

And she led on organising and delivering NUJ’s first mental health conference, following her experience of being homeless, having complex PTSD, and being unable to work as a freelance due to domestic abuse.

She says it was the support she received from the union that “helped me to get my life and career back”.

She is currently leading on the co-production of new disability reporting guidelines with Disability Wales, with which she was previously a trustee.

Among her roles outside NUJ, Hirst has been a member of the Welsh government’s Disability Rights Taskforce, was part of the delegations of disabled people’s organisations that travelled to Geneva to hold the last government to account on the UN disability convention, and she currently chairs Disability Arts Cymru.

*John Pring, editor of DNS, is an NUJ member

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