The Cart before the Horse: Disability and Employment in theUK by Keith Armstrong

Abstract: Discusses the Human Rights of disabled people and Employment Law and current policies in the UK.

Keywords: Disability Studies, Equalities, Human Geography, Human Rights, Employment Law, Planning, Politics, Policy Studies.

London2016

Acknowledgments

This paper couldn't have been put together without the assistance of many people. I am especially grateful for the time and assistance given by I am very grateful to allthose who have assisted me in so many ways with this research: Eva Skoulariki, Clara Creze and Liz Taylor.

Because of my physical impairment, I would also like to thank the many people whohave helped me to live and have given me support. This includes the people of Camden.

Front image by Liz Taylor

----------- I must point out that any factual errors or sentiment unwittingly suggested are my responsibility alone. The punctuation and typeface of the authors quoted have at times been modified.

All rights are reserved. The author's moral rights are asserted. No part of thispaper may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the author.

© Copyright 2016 Keith Armstrong, London

The cart before the horse - UK Government policies, Disability and Employment by Keith Armstrong 1

The Cart before the Horse : UK Government policies, Disability and Employment by Keith Armstrong

If ever there was a set of ideological policies that have put the cart before the horse and have gone as far as killing off the horse completely, it is those which this government has devised. These policies directly and indirectly affect the employment, education and independent living of disabled people. The policies are not only without merit but are also highly cynical, taking us back to a Dickensian past. It seems obvious that before employment can take place there have to be jobs available that unemployed disabled people can do, and there needs to be adequate and accessible education for disabled people to allow them to do the jobs in the first place. But the Cameron government have undermined the chances of disabled people even seeking education and employment in a number of ways – making transport difficult to access, scrapping the Independent Living Fund, abolishing sheltered workshops such as Remploy and cutting back support workers for disabled students.

This government has made it more difficult for disabled people to get educated and find employment and they stand in a long tradition of governments who have failed to address the issue; But even amongst this list of inadequacy, the current government sticks out, andthis becomes clear when looking at a brief history of previous government policies on disability and employment.

In 1944, The Disabled Persons (Employment) Act was introduced, which stated that there were two reserve jobs for disabled people, one of being a lift operator and another of beinga car park attendant, and that all employers employing more than 300 people had to employ 3% of the workforce of registered disabled people. Before The Disabled Persons Act, various charities and the National Employment Office had set up sheltered workshopswhich were subsidised either by the State or by charities. The support provided in these workshops encouraged and allowed disabled people to play an active role in a wider variety of jobs; such as Florists, small Letterpress runs such as headed notepaper or business cards, woodwork, furniture manufacture and soft toy making.

The Disabled Persons Act sought to employ 3% of the registered disabled unemployed, and was rather low considering the population with physical impairments averages out at 15%. It was not implemented anyway. While these procedures turned out to be inadequateso much so that only one daily newspaper ever reached 3% of its workforce to be disabled, and there were no successful prosecutions attempted on major employers who openly flaunted the law. These reforms made only a very small but crucial indent in the lives of disabled people, however they were well intended. Some sheltered workshops declined, mainly were supported by charities such as the Woodlarks Trust while Remploy ran as an arm of the UK government expanded to include the manufacture of manual wheelchairs and furniture.

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It actually became profitable, though not as profitable as some other industries. In fact towards the end of Remploy Remploy factories shut up shop – the end of an era for disabled workers

Writing on the employment of disabled people Colin Barnes, Emeritus Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Leeds considers that;

]..] paid employment is widely recognised as a major signifier of adulthood. Indeed, work is central to our society, not simply because it produces the commodities which are necessary for survival but also because it has a profound influence on human relationships. People are categorised through work in terms of class, status and influence. Apart from income, work provides a sense of identity and self esteem, opportunities for social contacts outside the family home, skill development and creativity, as well as a sense of time, obligation and control. The economic, social and psychological implications for people who are excluded from the workplace are clear. The majority of disabled people have been denied access to the work-place since the industrial revolution. [1]

Something that almost any school teacher can tell is that what is essential for a good career is good education and training. From the 1940's-1980's many disabled people havebeen educated in what is termed "special schools"(segregated schools). Most of these schools were much smaller than the ordinary schools around them. Perhaps an extreme example of this was the Ormerod school run by Oxford City Council which had disabled pupils from 6 to 16 years old and only two classrooms.

Writing in 1992 Barnes stated that;

There is little dispute that disabled people are more likely to be out ofwork than their able-bodied contemporaries. In the mid-1960s, for example, the general unemployment rate was well below 2% whilst among disabled people it was over 7%. Until the mid-1970s disabled workers were three times more likely to be out of work than their able-bodied counter-parts. In the early 1980s the gap narrowed somewhat not because unemployment among disabled people declined but because of the rise in unemployment generally. In 1982 it was estimated that the general unemployment rate was 12% and 16% for disabled workers. [2]

Let's face it, unskilled work is usually physically demanding and requires strong mainly non-disabled people to carry it out. Wheelchair users for example aren't likely to be house builders or road diggers. Despite the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 coming into force in2014 there's still plenty of places for publicly funded education which are completely inaccessible to disabled students in one way or another. Yet the very nature of researchingor writing is done by people sitting on their bottoms, something that people with mobility impairments are very good at. Even Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most renowned physicist of our time would not have been able to get his degree if he had his physical impairment earlier in life. Hawking first studied at Oxford University and then he went to Cambridge. If he had stayed in Oxford with his amount of impairment, he would have had

The cart before the horse - UK Government policies, Disability and Employment by Keith Armstrong 3

great difficulties (including a certain loss of dignity) trying to access the resources of the University of Oxford's Astor-physic Lab which was only built in the early 1970's, over three hundred years after wheelchairs were first used in England. Bicycles and manual wheelchairs – a short history

While this systematic discrimination in Higher education makes it inaccessible to students and educators with physical impairments, they are possibly losing their most productive students.

The cart before the horse - UK Government policies, Disability and Employment by Keith Armstrong 4

Far worse than the education system are places of employment. While many large firms officially have anti-discrimination policies including local authorities, invariably the rate that employers are willing to take on disabled applicants is exceedingly low. Subcontractors providing services for local authorities and government departments are much slower.

In order to get a job you need to get an interview.

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Colin Barnes points out;

Two studies published by the Spastics Society found similarresults in the private sector. Using scientifically approved techniques similar to those used to measure racial discrimination, researchcarried out by Fry (1986) and Graham, Jordan and Lamb (1990)has established conclusively that employers discriminate directlyagainst disabled people at the initial point of applying for a job.Discrimination was measured by examining employers' responsesto two fictitious applications, which differed only in that one purported to be from a disabled applicant and the other was not. Theapplications were sent in response to 152 job applications in thefirst study and 197 in the second. The second survey was controlledin order to account for changes in the employment market duringthe period between the two studies, in particular the relative declinein unemployment generally and the increase in job vacancies. Itshowed that the level of discrimination encountered by disabledpeople remains virtually unchanged; almost identical results wereachieved. Able-bodied applicants were around 1.5 times more likelyto receive a positive response to an application than were applicants with an impairment, and a disabled candidate was six timesmore likely to receive a negative response. [3]

Of course getting an interview does not guarantee you a job, however it is an indispensable part of a process of getting paid employment.

Since these surveys were published there have been two Acts of Parliament; The Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 and The Equality Act of 2010. However, these employment studies have not being repeated and the effectiveness in the employment field has not been tested. I doubt if there has been any real change as there has not been any serious prosecutions of enforcement of UK equality law and the employment needs of disabled people.

From my own experience of being interviewed for a job in my wheelchair as a Senior Transport officer for the London Strategic Policy Unit (LSPU) in 1986, advising nine local authorities on equality, transport and planning issues, in which I was successful, however on the second day at work I was asked to leave the building, as someone had considered me to be a fire risk because of my wheelchair.

In 1980, I wrote an article accusing the Fire Brigade of acting like South African Apartheid police because the excuse that wheelchair users were a fire risk. This resulted in a meeting of disabled people and the Greater London Fire Brigade. The Fire Brigade were asked if they could name one incident in their then one hundred years of existence where the presence of a wheelchair user had caused injury or death during an incident. Despite their large detailed database they were unable to come up with one incident, although even one incident within 100 years could not be significant. The Fire Brigade agreed that anyone claiming that the ban on wheelchair users was due to the Brigade instructions and that they would be prepared to take legal action.

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As mentioned earlier, at every point the Cameron government has hindered possibilities of employment for disabled people. Firstly they abolished Remploy, pushing more than 400 people out of gainful employment. Secondly, it should be noted that Boris (Alex) Johnson halted plans to make all of London Underground accessible, or even the new Cross Rail; although they have since agreed to make it accessible. Reliable access to transport is essential for people to seek and get work. Thirdly, the abolition of the Independent Living Fund, severe cuts in the funding of disabled peoples possibility to live independently, the high cost of education and the cut backs in support workers for disabled students.

From my own experience the vast majority of disabled people I know are highly resourceful but testing if they have the stamina for working in a supermarket or any other ATOS inspired theoretical jobs (essentially the ATOS test in one) is not a good way of using their skills.

I will repeat what I said at the beginning of this article, rather than a purely cynical way of hurting people we have to put the cart before the horse – there has to be a massive reformin the education system for disabled pupils and a real change in attitudes of employers. These days social services departments and governments base their assessments of need not on the degree of need but on their budget. Thus fundamentally failing disabled people. Another example of cart before the horse which means many vulnerable people will suffer and their lives will be blighted through no fault of their own. Just one small example, how many newsreaders are there on television or radio who are wheelchair users? Considering these are activities presented by people sitting down, yet in this country at this time there are more than half a million full time wheelchair users. Indeed how many of these people in total are actually employed across any sector of work?

Every disabled person I know (no exceptions) wants to contribute to society in the ways they are able to – the denial of disabled people in the workplace leads to a great loss of potential in every area of government and industry.

Even disabled employees at the Department of Work and Pensions have complained about discrimination at the DWP. The UK government has been accused of “leaving the disabled behind” in its drive for greater employment, after it emerged that more than half ofthe households in which nobody works contain at least one adult with a disability.

To be honest, I can't see how companies associated with the CBI are queueing up to employ a workforce who are might have ill health problems and therefore would be unreliable employees on a daily basis.

However, they are likely to be more reliable than the dead people who have been sent letters by the DWP!

Members of Cameron's cabinet and their advisers know this already but it is just a cynical exercise to witch-hunt disabled people.

One must point out that disabled people in the UK did not provoke the financial crisis which was caused by mainly well-off people gambling on the stock exchange or other financial institutions. In fact, disabled people are often good at problem solving, a talent much needed if Britain is to get out of the recession.

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So how are we to resolve this employment issue?

Properly enforce existing equality legislation for disabled people.

Secondly, I suggest that disabled people are consulted so that the collective experience of disabled people can be used. Secondly, there should be a real discussion with employers at all levels in the field. Thirdly, access into places of work needs a vast improvement. We should also consider how demoralising it is to be turned down for hundreds of jobs. Disabled people come from all areas of society and as such form a large knowledge base with many problem-solving skills. We need a flexible benefit system which does not penalise people for part-time work. Disabled people employed in the organisation are a good resource. At present, many disabled people have contributed (often behind the scenes) a lot of voluntary labour, particularly to small organisations. We should value thesecontributions. Good access to buildings increases their usefulness and if a business has tills, it means more money is coming into the business and therefore a higher turnover.

Rescind recent cutbacks against disabled people's independent living.

1 Barnes, Colin (1992: 62), Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination: A Case for Anti-discrimination Legislation, (C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd)

2 Barnes, Colin (1992: 63), Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination: A Case for Anti-discrimination Legislation, (C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd)

3 Barnes, Colin (1992: 65), Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination: A Case for Anti-discrimination Legislation, (C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd)

© Copyright Keith Armstrong 2016