The UK’s Employment Rights Bill 2024-25 was published in October 2024 and aims to introduce 28 significant labour law reforms. Key measures include making unfair dismissal a day-one right, providing guaranteed hours for zero-hours workers, introducing miscarriage bereavement leave, banning fire-and-rehire practices, and establishing a new Fair Work Agency for enforcement. These are important interventions that address some of the precarious and eroding conditions many workers face. Yet, while they represent progress, they do not go far enough, particularly for disabled people and those living with long-term health conditions.
For these groups, the barriers faced are not only about insecure contracts or unfair dismissal; they are rooted in how the very idea of a good worker is imagined, even in this revised legislation. Work is supposed to provide more than just pay. At its best, it can offer purpose, stability, identity, and a sense of belonging. Yet for many disabled people and/or those living with long-term health conditions, work can require constant negotiations of legitimacy – resisting workplace policy that situates them as a managerial burden while also convincing managers that their place in the workplace is deserved, and that their qualifications or skills are valid. Only last month a qualified medic reported to the BBC that she was told she was ‘not a real doctor’ because she is disabled.
The undermining of disabled peoples’ skills, knowledge and ability can inform and negatively impact their recruitment, experiences of work and efforts to progress. Even in organisations that proudly advertise their commitment to diversity and inclusion, the reality often tells a different story. Workplace policies may be updated and modernised, but cultural assumptions about what it is to be a good worker remain remarkably persistent. At the heart of this is the enduring myth of the ideal worker. The ideal worker is a concept most of us recognise: the assumed standard of employee in job design and the organisation of work. The ideal worker is always available, endlessly flexible, puts work above their personal needs, never asks for accommodations and is uber-productive. They are not troubled by caring responsibilities, unpredictable bodily functions, or any of the realities of real life that might get in the way of maximum productivity. Those employees who are most able to align themselves with the ideal worker are rewarded with promotions, bonuses, and status while those who fall short are often penalised.
One of the many ways in which we can fall short as workers, is through experiencing ill-health. Ill-health can mean absence, or reduced productivity. However, to experience illness is part of the human condition, and despite the assumption of full health in much workplace policy, there are clear formal and informal systems in place to manage employee illness. This formalised deviation from work was theorised as ‘the sick role’ by American sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s. He described this role as a social contract: where individuals are excused from work when they are ill, if they are actively seeking treatment, and trying to get better. This framework still shapes how workplaces respond to employee ill-health. If you’re too ill to work, you are allowed sick leave. When you return, you are expected to pick up where you left off, as if the interruption never happened.
This neat division between sickness and health doesn’t reflect our reality though, where almost half of us experience long term health conditions. Chronic pain, fatigue, autoimmune disorders, mental health conditions, and other fluctuating or hidden impairments resist tidy recovery timelines. They do not conform to the sick role because the sickness they are experiencing is not temporary. Nor do they allow workers to meet the demands of the ideal worker. Instead, long-term ill employees are trapped in a double bind: not well enough to meet ideal worker standards, but not ‘the-right-kind-of-ill’ to be absent. Long-term ill or disabled employees are marked as liabilities, rather than colleagues with equal potential. Managers, under increasing pressure to enforce these systems, (often with reduced resources), may succumb to problematic stereotypes relating to illness and question whether ill employees are genuinely unwell – whether they deserve workplace accommodations or opportunities for advancement (i.e. see them as skiving rather than striving).
The implications of the ideal worker as standard, are stark. Disabled or long-term ill workers can plateau in their careers, be ‘managed out’ or be dismissed because workplace systems and cultures were never designed with them in mind. Talented people are sidelined, not out of choice, but out of systemic neglect. The loss is not only personal but organisational: workplaces miss out on innovation, organisational familiarity, and lived expertise that could make them stronger.
The application of all elements of the Employment Rights Bill can provide a critical moment for us to reflect and improve on how we approach workplace inclusion, especially given the government’s continued commitment to reduce the number of people on social welfare benefits relating to ill health. While the Bill tackles important aspects of precarious work, it leaves untouched the deeper cultural and structural assumptions that continue to punish disabled and long-term ill workers. If Labour is serious about building fairer workplaces, it must go beyond reforming contracts and dismissal procedures. It must challenge the very myths of the ideal worker and encourage employers to develop policies that no longer draw on an outdated model of illness. Instead, workplace policies should be reimagined to commit to embedding inclusivity at the heart of how work is designed and valued. Only then can workplaces move from managing disabled people as exceptions to recognising them as integral to the future of work.
This blog is a summarised version of chapter 9 in ‘Recalibrating Stigma Sociologies of Health and Illness’ Edited by Gareth Thomas, Oli Williams, Tanisha Spratt and Amy Chandler, and available here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/recalibrating-stigma
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Why Workplaces Still Fail Disabled People (and What Needs to Change)
by Jen Remnant Oct 8, 2025The UK’s Employment Rights Bill 2024-25 was published in October 2024 and aims to introduce 28 significant labour law reforms. Key measures include making unfair dismissal a day-one right, providing guaranteed hours for zero-hours workers, introducing miscarriage bereavement leave, banning fire-and-rehire practices, and establishing a new Fair Work Agency for enforcement. These are important interventions that address some of the precarious and eroding conditions many workers face. Yet, while they represent progress, they do not go far enough, particularly for disabled people and those living with long-term health conditions.
For these groups, the barriers faced are not only about insecure contracts or unfair dismissal; they are rooted in how the very idea of a good worker is imagined, even in this revised legislation. Work is supposed to provide more than just pay. At its best, it can offer purpose, stability, identity, and a sense of belonging. Yet for many disabled people and/or those living with long-term health conditions, work can require constant negotiations of legitimacy – resisting workplace policy that situates them as a managerial burden while also convincing managers that their place in the workplace is deserved, and that their qualifications or skills are valid. Only last month a qualified medic reported to the BBC that she was told she was ‘not a real doctor’ because she is disabled.
The undermining of disabled peoples’ skills, knowledge and ability can inform and negatively impact their recruitment, experiences of work and efforts to progress. Even in organisations that proudly advertise their commitment to diversity and inclusion, the reality often tells a different story. Workplace policies may be updated and modernised, but cultural assumptions about what it is to be a good worker remain remarkably persistent. At the heart of this is the enduring myth of the ideal worker. The ideal worker is a concept most of us recognise: the assumed standard of employee in job design and the organisation of work. The ideal worker is always available, endlessly flexible, puts work above their personal needs, never asks for accommodations and is uber-productive. They are not troubled by caring responsibilities, unpredictable bodily functions, or any of the realities of real life that might get in the way of maximum productivity. Those employees who are most able to align themselves with the ideal worker are rewarded with promotions, bonuses, and status while those who fall short are often penalised.
One of the many ways in which we can fall short as workers, is through experiencing ill-health. Ill-health can mean absence, or reduced productivity. However, to experience illness is part of the human condition, and despite the assumption of full health in much workplace policy, there are clear formal and informal systems in place to manage employee illness. This formalised deviation from work was theorised as ‘the sick role’ by American sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s. He described this role as a social contract: where individuals are excused from work when they are ill, if they are actively seeking treatment, and trying to get better. This framework still shapes how workplaces respond to employee ill-health. If you’re too ill to work, you are allowed sick leave. When you return, you are expected to pick up where you left off, as if the interruption never happened.
This neat division between sickness and health doesn’t reflect our reality though, where almost half of us experience long term health conditions. Chronic pain, fatigue, autoimmune disorders, mental health conditions, and other fluctuating or hidden impairments resist tidy recovery timelines. They do not conform to the sick role because the sickness they are experiencing is not temporary. Nor do they allow workers to meet the demands of the ideal worker. Instead, long-term ill employees are trapped in a double bind: not well enough to meet ideal worker standards, but not ‘the-right-kind-of-ill’ to be absent. Long-term ill or disabled employees are marked as liabilities, rather than colleagues with equal potential. Managers, under increasing pressure to enforce these systems, (often with reduced resources), may succumb to problematic stereotypes relating to illness and question whether ill employees are genuinely unwell – whether they deserve workplace accommodations or opportunities for advancement (i.e. see them as skiving rather than striving).
The implications of the ideal worker as standard, are stark. Disabled or long-term ill workers can plateau in their careers, be ‘managed out’ or be dismissed because workplace systems and cultures were never designed with them in mind. Talented people are sidelined, not out of choice, but out of systemic neglect. The loss is not only personal but organisational: workplaces miss out on innovation, organisational familiarity, and lived expertise that could make them stronger.
The application of all elements of the Employment Rights Bill can provide a critical moment for us to reflect and improve on how we approach workplace inclusion, especially given the government’s continued commitment to reduce the number of people on social welfare benefits relating to ill health. While the Bill tackles important aspects of precarious work, it leaves untouched the deeper cultural and structural assumptions that continue to punish disabled and long-term ill workers. If Labour is serious about building fairer workplaces, it must go beyond reforming contracts and dismissal procedures. It must challenge the very myths of the ideal worker and encourage employers to develop policies that no longer draw on an outdated model of illness. Instead, workplace policies should be reimagined to commit to embedding inclusivity at the heart of how work is designed and valued. Only then can workplaces move from managing disabled people as exceptions to recognising them as integral to the future of work.
This blog is a summarised version of chapter 9 in ‘Recalibrating Stigma Sociologies of Health and Illness’ Edited by Gareth Thomas, Oli Williams, Tanisha Spratt and Amy Chandler, and available here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/recalibrating-stigma