Response to proposal for Increasing employment
opportunities for people with disability
Name: Anita Viglione
Introduction
I am responding to the paper as a person with a disability who is employed full-time. I am currently
working as IT support. Experiences and opinions are my own unless stated otherwise. All stories and
examples of current practice have either happened to myself or to other disabled people.
The main contention of the paper increasing employment opportunities for people with disability is
that mandated reporting to the federal government by employers of the number and type of
employees with disabilities that are a part of their workforce will increase participation of the
disabled in the workforce. The paper also contends that the main barrier to reporting is the human
right of the individual not to disclose. I question whether reporting by the employer on its own will
improve employment for people with a disability, issues of disclosure aside. What needs to happen is
a massive cultural shift away from the deficit model of disability. Employer reporting coupled with
accountability for employers not meeting requirements would go a long way to making this cultural
shift.
1.1 What are the main barriers faced by people with disability in employment?
There are many barriers faced by people with disability in employment, and these barriers manifest
throughout the entire employment process. Actually gaining employment is a barrier, followed
closely by questions of competency and worth. High unemployment amongst the non-disabled
population is also a barrier to employment for disabled people. Finally the anti-discrimination act
itself is a barrier to employment for people with disabilities.
The research shows that once employed disabled employees make better workers, but that same
research shows that gaining employment is far harder for the disabled than for the non-disabled. Is the
fact that the disabled make better, more loyal workers, a consequence of their disability or the
difficulty in finding employment? None of the research tries to answer this question. In my own
experiences and opinion the answer is the latter, that the disabled workers are far more loyal to an
employer than their non-disabled counterparts because that employer looked beyond the disability
and hired them when other employers have not done so. I've also seen this same effect when assessing
employees in gendered roles who come from the opposite gender (ie, female computer technicians
and male teachers). To be considered over the traditional employee, the non-traditional employee
must exceed the competency of the traditional employee.
This is related to the barrier of high unemployment. History has shown that employers are more likely
to hire non-traditional candidates when there are not enough traditional candidates available to fill
available positions (again this is shown when looking at men and women in non-traditional roles).
The fact that there is high unemployment amongst able-bodied workers means that there will be more
than enough workers available to do the work, and the employer does not need to look outside of the
traditional worker pool. Disabled people fall firmly into the non-traditional group, and thus their
employment prospects are adversely affected by high unemployment (for example the increase in
youth unemployment has produced a decrease in the number of disabled people being offered
apprenticeships).
The struggle does not end with gaining employment. Once the disabled person gains employment
there is the ongoing struggle to keep it. The disabled employees have to worry that their disability
(particularly if it is a degenerative disability) will adversely affect their working performance at a
later date, and as such any drop in performance will incur a loss of their job. When it comes to job
performance the disabled are put under greater scrutiny than their able-bodied counterparts, not only
are they asked whether they are capable of performing the job but are they capable of performing the
job with their disability (ie, a blind person will be asked can they use a telephone). More often then
not the disability will affect performance, in which case there is the worry that the employer will pay
the disabled worker less than the able-bodied worker because their performance is lower.
I have seen profiles of people employed with a disability which highlight these anxieties. One profile
showed a person who'd been diagnosed with a degenerative disability constantly worrying that she
would lose her high-level position because of her disability. Another profile showed someone who
became disabled after a car crash indirectly get demoted (this person moved from a manager's
position to a call centre operator). A third profile came from an employer of a disabled person who
then had to justify to another one of the workers why the disabled employee was being paid the same
as the able-bodied employees. Despite this all three profiles were held up as good examples of people
being employed with disabilities.
The job services agencies are at best no help and at worst a hindrance. Employment services are
designed to provide short-term job-matching services. When faced with a disabled client they
immediately assume that their disability only allows them to do low-level minimal-skilled work
(despite any training or qualifications they have). Also there is no vetting of employers against the
special requirements of the disabled client, this leads to job services matching disabled clients with
unsuitable workplaces (ie an agency recommending a client in a wheelchair for a job at a workplace
without wheelchair access).
Finally, there is the anti-discrimination act loophole. The anti-discrimination act allows an employer
to reject a candidate on the grounds of disability if their disability will stop them from doing the job.
Couple this with a society that still remembers a time when the disabled were viewed as people who
could add no value to the community and you have a generation of employers who believe that a
disability prevents a person from undertaking any work-related activity.
2.1: What are the practical and workable approaches to make a real improvement to
employment outcomes and workplace equality for people with disability? How
would they work?
First the anti-discrimination act loophole described above needs to be fixed. The only way I can see to
doing this is proving that disabled people with varying disabilities can do the job. Probably the easiest
way to do this would be a series of capability sheets explaining that yes a vision-impaired person can
use a telephone.
The job services agencies, particularly those focused on disability employment, need to take on more
of an advocate role and need to start screening potential employers based on the capabilities of the
clients. Disabled clients should not be offered nor encouraged to apply for jobs where reasonable
adjustments cannot be made (ie, for the example of the client in the wheelchair the employment
agency should have checked that the workplace had wheelchair access).
2.2: Would introducing disability employment disclosure arrangements improve the
employment of people with disability? What are the likely benefits of such
arrangements? Should they be voluntary or mandatory?
It's my opinion that introducing disability disclosure arrangements on their own will only aid in
reporting correctly the number of disabled in employment, it will not increase the participation rate
for people with disabilities. Employment reporting does not shift the ingrained cultural mentality nor
does it plug the anti-discrimination loophole.
Reporting on currently employed people with disabilities cannot show the number people with
disabilities not being hired. Rather the reporting should be extended to include all applicants who
applied for jobs and were rejected on the grounds of their disability.
2.3: What are the key risks that would need to be addressed?
One key risk would be that this reporting becomes more paperwork which amounts to no change. By
making the reporting lead to something, either commendations for employers doing the right thing or
penalties for those that do not.
2.4: How are disclosure issues best resolved? What would better practice look like?
2.5: How are disclosure and privacy issues best addressed?
The report provides the answer to both these questions. By using anonymous data collection methods
the employer sidesteps the issue of disclosure. The employer will know the number of members of
staff with disabilities but not which members are disabled. This will ensure that there is no risk of
penalty for disclosing.
2.6: What are the barriers to a person disclosing that they have a disability to
their employer?
The biggest barrier is being penalised for disclosing. Disclosing a disability brings the risk that person
will be adversely affected at all stages of the employment cycle, from not being offered a job to being
made redundant. This is a real concern, as the anti-discrimination law allows employers to reject an
applicant due to their disability. More often then not the disabled are advised not to disclose unless
their disability visibly impacts on their performance (I have had this advice from DLU staff at tertiary
institutions), if there were no risk of penalty for disclosure than their should be no issue of disclosure
(as all disability support services require disclosure).
Then there is the issue of when a person discloses a disability that information is then not passed on to
the relevant people. I experienced this at university, where even though I disclosed my disability I still
needed to disclose to every lecturer and almost every tutor for five years. The disclosure information
was not passed on because the DLU cited privacy concerns. The process of disclosure needs to be as
streamlined as possible.
2.8:What would be the most suitable definition of ‘disability’ for the purpose of disability
employment disclosure arrangements designed to encourage employers to hire more people
with disability?
I would use the DDA's definition as it seems to be less of a deficit than the SDAC definition. However
the definition is too broad and includes as disabilities cases which do not affect employee
performance and are not perceived by employers to do so. I would also add that for the purposes of
disability employment reporting that the disability must be perceived to affect an employees ability to
perform compared to a non-disabled employee. Since it is a perceived incapability of a disabled
person to perform in a workplace the reporting must address this.
2.9:Do information areas outlined above cover the right information or is there other
information that could or should be sought from employers?
I would include in the reporting information the broad types of disability of the employees and
whether the disability is permanent or temporary.