A resolution for 2012 - the 3R Promise
Wednesday, 04 January 2012
This is a guest blog by Lewis Smith, a member of the Volunteer Rights Inquiry Call to Action Progress Group.
The year 2011 was the year of volunteering, but during 2012 there will be an event of major interest to both volunteers and volunteer involving organisations (VIOs).
The case is not yet listed, but at some point the UK Supreme Court will rule on whether a volunteer can claim she has been discriminated against. Put very simply, a volunteer told her manager she was HIV positive, and was later asked not to volunteer with the organisation any longer.
There is no doubt that if this person had received pay for the work she was doing, the Equalities Act, which outlaws such disability discrimination, would apply. VIOs know they have to be careful, either by payment or other signals, not to establish an employment contract, and this volunteer failed in attempts to have herself considered a 'worker'.
What can the Supreme Court say? Perhaps that it's time for this particular moral wrong to become a legal wrong. Or that the law of contract is so fundamental that it can't be tampered with in this particular. Or the case could be kicked into touch for the EU Court of Justice to consider. We won't know for some time, and I doubt if anyone would be prepared to bet on there being any speedy fundamental change.
That view was implicit in the findings of the Volunteer Rights Inquiry which reported in 2010/11. They further considered the half-way-house of a Commissioner for Volunteers as a way of helping those who had been unfairly treated. Though not ruling this out, they nevertheless suggested that VIOs themselves should first be encouraged to look at their systems and actions, and they published the 'Call to Action' with its '3R Promise', inviting organisations to sign up.
The number who have made the promise is approaching a hundred. It is the aim of the Call to Action Progress Group, which is monitoring this, to increase that number substantially in 2012. That is one of our new year resolutions.
Could it also be yours? If you are a volunteer, could you encourage your organisation to sign up? If you are a manager and your organisation has not yet done so, would you please consider it, or prompt whoever needs to be prompted to consider it?
Volunteering can be thought of as a bright spot within the forecast gloom of 2012. In political, social and economic circles it will continue to be under the spotlight – and, in view of the Supreme Court case, in legal circles too. We of the CAPG believe that the 3R Promise will significantly help maintain that brightness.
