Making legal history, every month

In Black History Month we celebrate people making history today. So we sat down with Shantha David, one of many Black women making history at UNISON, to find out how she is fighting for equality, helping to make members’ lives better – and actually changing the law. Shantha, why are you proud to be heading UNISON’s legal services team? We may be a small in-house team, but we are an award-winning team running strategic, ground-breaking and cutting-edge litigation and managing a comprehensive external legal service for members. As a team, we have had many successes for our members, from our four-year battle to eradicate employment tribunal fees at the Supreme Court to our recent national minimum pay victory setting the standard for calculating pay for low-paid home care workers and obtaining £55m (and counting) for term-time members in schools over miscalculated annual leave payments. This is not to forget all our precedent-setting, Supreme Court rulings on equal pay, working time and holiday pay. These decisions have changed the lives of mainly low-paid workers in the UK and that is our aim. In addition, as campaigning lawyers we have been at the forefront of campaigns ensuring access to justice for our members and have actively minimised the effects of some of the government’s harsher changes that would have made it harder to tackle injustices against employers. That is why legal services remains one of the main reasons that members join UNISON. We celebrate your ach...
Source: UNISON Health care news - Category: UK Health Authors: Tags: Article Black history month Legal legal services Source Type: news