Worlds Apart? Employment Policies for Disabled People in Eighteen Countries: A Review

Patricia Thornton and Neil Lunt
Social Policy Research Unit, University of York, United Kingdom


Abstract Empolyment opportunities for disabled people have been elevated as a matter of policy concern. In this paper, it identifies a range of policy approaches in relation to employment of disabled people in 18 countries. Issues of cross-cultural importance are highlighted and aspiration for policy agenda of 2000 is also shared.

Disability and The Policy Agenda

The last two decades have seen disability issues occupy an increasingly prominent place on the policy agenda. This includes particular policy arenas - education, health, housing, transport - as well as discussions around anti-discrimination and human rights legislation that embrace disability on a number of fronts.
A contributory factor to the intensification of debate has been the disabled people movement, which by challenging discrimination and promoting individual rights, have politicised disability issues across all countries. The movement has highlighted notions of disadvantage and exclusion and has been contributory factor to the 'soup' of policy change. We now use a completely different vocabulary and way of thinking when discussing disability issues. There has been a parallel challenge to professionals, policy-makers and academics to ensure they work in partnership with disabled people. *1

Employment Opportunities on the Agenda

In recent years employment opportunities for disabled people have been elevated as a matter of policy concern. Work opportunities are perceived as central to an individual's self-worth and are also crucial in ensuring a person has sufficient income to participate within the wider society. In policy terms, securing appropriate employment for disabled people has become less of a welfare and health issue and more of a labour market concern. At the same time, new ways of producing and distributing goods have led to a 'loosening up' of the labour market. Particularly, countries are now faced with employment opportunities that are part-time, based on short-term contracts, use new technologies to facilitate homeworking, rely on a more casualised labour force, and require greater task flexibility and ongoing retraining.

The Study

National policy-makers are increasingly looking cross-nationally for "solutions" to the "problems" of employment of disabled people, and disabled people and their allies are drawing on experience elsewhere to promote, and sometimes achieve, radical change nationally. Employment Policies for Disabled People in Eighteen Countries: A Review sought to provide an overview of legislation, schemes and services aimed at integrating disabled people into the workforce. The study covered 18 countries:

The review outlines the type of provision in place within each country, looks in detail at the implementation of different legislative approaches, and discusses the effectiveness in achieving objectives within the national framework. A concluding discussion highlights issues of cross-national importance. The publication comments on:

1. Policy and institutional context
2. Definitions of disability
3. Statistics
4. Employment support services
5. Open employment: legal obligations and rights
6. Persuasion policies
7. Open employment: financial initiatives
8. Sheltered employment
9. New forms of employment

The study draws on a range of sources including legislative texts, published documents, conference papers, working papers and assorted grey material. It includes documents provided by international bodies such as the International Labour Organisation, European Commission, Council of Europe, and United Nations. Representatives of the Disabled Peoples International were asked to contribute to the study, as were a number of national representatives of employers and employees. For many of the countries we used national informants, who were grounded in the national context, to gather material and assemble the account. Formal links were also established between researchers and officials from European Union member states who sat on the HELIOS II Employment Working Group.

Policy Approaches

The study found a range of policy approaches aimed at integrating disabled people into the labour market.

Employment support services
Service-level measures are the most difficult to capture in a study such as ours. One trend we did find was the incorporation of disabled people within mainstream labour market measures. Labour market authorities have become increasingly important providers of training and placement services, as well as of financial incentives. Countries vary in their attachment to mainstream employment services. Specialist provision is stronger in those countries with traditions of assessment and classification of disability and of registration.

Alternatives to publicly provided support services are emerging. Private and non-governmental organisations, including disability organisations, now provide counselling, training and placement services, independently or under contract. Proliferation of providers and fragmentation of responsibility for employment support services have highlighted the need for co-ordination on the ground.

There is a move towards making training more responsive to the needs of employers and the market, and there is an emerging trend in favour of on-the-job training, rather than training as a forerunner to placement.

Open employment: legal obligations and rights
Surveying the countries, there is a range of potential legislative responses.

1. Obligations may be set to employ a target number of disabled people, represented as a percentage of the workforce - usually known as 'compulsory employment' or a 'quota'. For those employers that fail to meet this quota there are financial penalties.

2. The second major type of legislation is human rights or anti-discrimination law. This legislation makes it illegal to discriminate against, or treat a person unfairly because of a disability. If individuals feel they have been discriminated against they take their cases to the Commission or industrial tribunal.

3. Third, there is legislation that requires employers to plan and implement equal opportunity or employment equity programmes. Under these measures, employers must take steps to improve the representation of disabled people in the workforce by removing the barriers that prevent them from getting jobs. Employers may be required to keep statistics and plans of how they intend to increase the number of disabled people in the workforce in the future.

4. Fourth, countries such as Germany and Sweden have protection against dismissal. In Germany this means the employer has to seek permission from the authorities to dismiss a person.

Alongside both anti-discrimination and compulsory employment measures there can be requirements to make 'reasonable accommodation' for the known limitations of disabled individuals.

There is a distinction between European Community (EC) countries and other countries sharing the "Anglophile" legal tradition. Quota schemes are a feature of virtually all the EC countries. Anti-discrimination legislation and employment equity are features of Australia, USA, Canada and, most recently, the UK. Generally quotas and anti-discrimination measures are not found side-by-side.

We have to consider how disability employment policy developed historically to understand this. There are influential factors which have favoured the quota scheme in Europe, dating back to the aftermath of World War I and World War II and based on ideas of compensation for war casualties. Anti-discrimination legislation has quite a different historical background, based on concepts of individual rights, rather than compensation. The introduction of anti-discrimination legislation is a recent policy measure for those countries that have it, and bases itself on the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

Introducing human rights and anti-discrimination legislation have created massive publicity. Early evidence about the impact of legislation suggests that legislation such as the American Disabilities Act helps individuals retain employment rather than facilitating entry into work. Such legislation also assumes individuals are informed and have education and training to take advantage of provisions - clearly this is not always the case.

Persuasion policies
Voluntary action is increasingly promoted alongside legal obligations. There are several government-led campaigns to increase awareness of the employment potential of disabled people, including encouragement, and the use of symbols and schemes.

Open employment: financial initiatives
There is a range of financial measures for the employer and employee. Often these are referred to as 'incentives' although their precise purposes are not always clear. It is possible to identify three sorts of purposes underpinning support for employers:

1. To compensate for reduced productivity or for costs associated with employing a disabled person. Reduced productivity is often assumed to be a necessary consequence of employing a disabled person and a blanket subsidy awarded. Alternatively, productivity is assessed and the loss compensated for on a proportionate basis.

2. Secondly, some countries have introduced 'rewards' in the form of lump-sum grants - often associated with job creation measures targeted at disadvantaged groups in the labour market. Some countries, for example, give rewards for exceeding the quota obligation. Subsidies may take the form of tax credits, as in the USA, while relief of employers' social security contributions is a popular European approach.

3. The third kind of financial support is to meet some or all of the costs of adapting the work or work place to meet the disabled employees' needs. All countries have grants or loans of this kind. They can be limited - for example only covering adaptations for registered disabled people.

In many countries the number of grants given is low. This may be because of the limit on who is eligible, limit on funds and possibly problems with information. In some countries there is a proliferation of grants which is quite bewildering.

There are also incentives to employees. These may include the costs of tools and equipment, fares to work, and the adaptation of motor vehicles. There is a range of incentives within the social security system, these include cash grants, medical care, rehabilitation benefits, and combining disability benefits and paid work, some of which are aimed at topping-up low wages, or encouraging self-employment.

Separate "sheltered workshop" provision
Sheltered provision has been well established in Europe. Our review in 1997 found many countries debating the future of sheltered work. There are many reasons for this including the lack of transition despite it being a stated aim, and the costs of employment and welfare subsidies.

Deinstitutionalisation and changing conceptions of work present new challenges. Individuals with learning or psychiatric disabilities often had services provided through sheltered employment workshops which focus on manufacturing tasks. However, this type of work is disappearing and there is a move to services and outside workshop environments.

Sheltered sectors remain in some countries. Indeed, in some countries the sector is very well organised and productive, for example Netherlands and Sweden. Often sheltered provision goes hand-in-hand with quotas (Germany, France and Netherlands).

Supported employment
Supported employment is defined as competitive, employer-paid work and continuing on-the-job support to those that need it to maintain employment. Initially developed in the USA and followed in Canada, Australia and the UK. Supported employment initiatives are also proliferating across the European Union. There is no single model of supported employment and often different approaches operate side-by-side.

New forms of the provision and service
Provision does not stand still. Any review of policy approaches highlights diversity and change. Self-employment initiatives are seen as offering flexible opportunities for disabled people, and there is a number of financial incentives available to promote this. Social enterprises or self-help firms are another option. Best established in Germany, and run by NGOs, they provide normal jobs with regular contracts and wages for disabled people in economic enterprises where non disabled people are also employed.

Policy for The Year 2000

These different 'pieces' form the overall policy picture. It is not unusual to find that when these are put together tensions and contradictions emerge.

Policy does not exist in a vacuum, but is related to current economic, ideological and technological factors. The policy picture may be re-framed to enable it to adapt to changing circumstances. For instance, a deteriorating economic position may be used as a rationale to relegate disability employment policy, or to encourage a more active labour market policy. Similarly, ideology may elevate individuality or more socially responsible approaches to employment. A policy of persuasion aimed at employers could, for example, be seen in terms of social responsibility as in Denmark or in terms of 'good business sense' as in the UK.

Prevention of disability at work and retention of those at risk of losing their jobs because of onset of disability are emerging policy objectives. These include legislative approaches to retention that target people at risk, emphasis on adjusting to work environments, and voluntary measures. Indeed, in our report we note:

"There appears to be a growing divergence between those policies aimed at keeping people in work or returning them to the labour market and those aimed at getting people into work for the first time. Disabled people who have never worked may emerge as the priority group in coming years. Consequently, it may be more appropriate to talk of disability policies than a single disability policy, and to acknowledge the equity issues which arise."

Furthermore, entry to work, early return to work, and prevention or retention whilst in work are potentially competing policy agendas. Different stakeholders have varying interests in those agendas, including a range of stakeholders with interests in a more laissez-faire policy.

*1 We hold to a paradigm that considers disability as 'socially constructed'. Thus , we use the term 'disabled people' rather than 'people with disabiliies'. These are also the definitions used by the disability lobby and disability theorists in the UK.

ASIA & PACIFIC JOUNAL ON DISABILITY

Vol. 1, No. 2, March 1998

Published by the Asia and Pacific Regional Committee of Rehabilitation International (RI) and the Regional NGO Network (RNN)