We are used to hearing the word disability associated with discrimination. Towns do not seem to be well-adapted, and the business sector still has a long way to go to integrate disabled people in the world of work. Meanwhile, people who have to live with their disability feel that society turns its back on people in vulnerable situations. Not only have they got to overcome their own barriers day after day, but they also have to work harder than others to prove their intrinsic worth, especially, when they apply for a job with non-disabled persons. From the outset they are at a disadvantage. Having to prove that in spite of your disability you are the best candidate for the job must be a Herculean task.
The study, entitled Underreporting of discriminatory incidents in Malta was carried out by the Ministry of Education, Employment and the Family.
It reported that people with disabilities feel covertly discriminated against as they feel they have to address questions they think an employer would like to put forward but refrains from asking for the sake of political correctness.
Such questions range from whether they can travel to work on their own to how they manage to use the bathroom without assistance.
David, who is physically disabled, says, “When a disabled person finds work he must prove that he can do his share of work and sometimes more than his share, which is what happens in fact.”
Noel also knows what discrimination at the workplace means. He is 40 years old and has greatly reduced vision, but he doesn’t feel disabled, in fact he only feels disabled “when people make me feel that way”. He is employed and uses tools to help him use the computer in his job. However, his working life is not spared discriminatory experiences, as was the case of his previous employment where he was given tasks that made his vision worse. When he asked the management to assign him different tasks, he was treated with indifference by the management, which gave him no option but to resign his job. He still feels bitter about this experience as the resignation on his CV tells a story of discrimination. He feels that he was not given “the chance to express his needs”, to say how he was feeling, and to show that he was capable of a number of other things at the place of work. However, his assessment is one of a management divorced from sensitivity and basic creativity, which demotivated him to the point of resigning.
In fact, as far as Academic Network of European Disability Experts goes, in 2005 the rate of employed disabled people was considerably lower than that of non-disabled people; only 14.6 per cent of the disabled were employed in contrast to 48.0 per cent of the non-disabled population. Moreover, statistics show that disabled people working in similar occupations to non-disabled people were seriously under-represented.
It is not that they can’t work; on the contrary, disabled people dream of having a good job and being independent; however, many times they are hampered by poorly coordinated support, inadequate education and training opportunities and archaic community attitudes. Overcoming this situation and ensure employment to people with disability is one of the aims of The Employment Training Corporation (ETC), which has included people with disabilities in its training programmes during which they receive training and are offered job opportunities with the mainstream.
The challenge is to develop employability skills for people with disabilities. Moving these individuals into productive employment is not just a matter of equality and fairness; it also makes economical sense and the figures speak for themselves.
As reported by the Academic Network of European Disability Experts in 2005, 5.9 per cent of the population suffer from some kind of disability. Allowing six per cent of the working population to remain unproductive and in turn making them dependent on State benefits is unacceptable. These individuals have talent and can make a contribution; what stands between making these individuals independent and active citizens and making them dependent on hand outs is an effective public policy.
The ETC offers and collaborates on a number of schemes oriented to shift the “fear factor that most employers have when it comes to engage disabled persons in their work-force”. One such scheme is the “Employment Aid Programme”, an European Social Fund co-funded project, which helps employers through subsidies when employing a person with disabilities; the government also offers reduced national insurance contributions for some years. However one has to state that these schemes are meant to support the initial period of training and going through the learning curve and not as a means to hire cheap labour. However, when everything is said and done, the problem seems to be that many employers don’t feel comfortable about hiring a person with a disability. The lack of information creates myths and fear of the unknown and often confusion about what adjustments would be needed. That’s why education is encouraged by the National Commission Persons with Disability (KNPD). In this sense, ETC says that “NGOs involved in the disabled persons sector should have jointly run initiatives and programmes − in collaboration with Employer’s Associations − aimed at changing and challenging the false perception that it is not sustainable to employ disabled persons”. Hence, the Commission offers disability equality training aimed to create “awareness about the way to approach disabled people”.
“A lot of positive work is already being carried out to address the employment negative ideas that still exist against disabled people,” holds KNPD, association which draws on an optimist future when it comes to overcome prejudices and stereotypes. “The majority of disabled children attend mainstream education,” which will hopefully help change the image of disability in other people’s eyes, a fact which will definitely contribute in paving the way for the next generation of people with disabilities.
Ms Garcia Reche is a Spanish journalist at the Foundation for Human Resources Development