The meeting took place at a reception organised for the winners of the 2023 and 2024 Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) Union Rep Awards. The 2023 Equality Award was won by PDA member and a co-opted member of the PDA LGBT+ Committee, Soh Xi Ken.
Unfortunately, Ken was unable to attend but he was represented by another PDA member and Scottish rep, Sade Awote, who recently joined the STUC Black Workers’ Committee and is pictured below with the First Minister.
Sade described Ken’s progress from his native Malaysia to Scotland. Sade also described the work undertaken by Ken and the wider PDA organisation in relation to the equalities agenda which was integral to the setting up of the PDA’s Equality, Diversity, & Inclusion (EDI) Networks.
Sade was accompanied by the PDA’s Head of Policy in Scotland, Maurice Hickey, who described how the PDA’s EDI Networks allow pharmacists to come together to address issues that impact them based on certain shared characteristics. Maurice described how the PDA’s networks began with student members and the part played in this by Ken.
Maurice discussed the work of the networks since January 2020 when the UK’s National Association of Women Pharmacists (NAWP) started its 115th year by becoming part of the PDA and so became the first PDA EDI Network. This was followed in April 2020 when the PDA launched three further networks; the PDA BAME Network, the PDA Ability Network, and the PDA LGBT+ Network.
Maurice also took the opportunity to inform the First Minister of the PDA Ability Network’s current campaign against disability discrimination called ‘Standing Up for Sitting Down’. The campaign describes the challenges experienced by some PDA members who have struggled to persuade their employer to provide a chair to do their work or how they were belittled for having one.
The PDA was described to the First Minister by STUC officials as, “a young union, but also a very active one.”
Learn more
- PDA LGBT+ Network committee member wins trade union equality award
- PDA Hospital Rep joins STUC Black Workers’ Committee
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- PDA Member Networks
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