Rolling Through

Australia is experiencing a job’s boom – or so we’re told.  The official unemployment rate is lower than it’s been in years.  That’s good, right?

The trouble is, the government is only telling the parts of the story that make them look good as we hurtle towards the next federal election.  There’s some sleight of hand and it’s the bits you don’t see that really matter.

If we don’t look at the hidden parts of this story, Australia’s unemployment rate is going to get stuck.

But there are ways to grease the track.

In 2019, over 40% of those on unemployment benefits had a partial capacity to work.  That means we need to rethink Australia’s approach to the employment of disabled people if we want to get to the happy ending of near full employment,.

 A high vacancy rate is not going to be enough.

What we’ve got now

Australia has a Disability Employment Service (DES).  If they’re not a service you’ve ever dealt with, you could be forgiven for assuming that they work with disabled people to help us identify our opportunities for employment and minimise the barriers that get in the way for us.

In fact, that’s not usually what happens. When you first sign up with a new provider, they make sure you’ve got a decent resume and standard cover letter. They ask you a few questions about what you want to do and make sure you know how to submit an application. They might tell you that they expect you to find work soon.

You sign a job plan.  It requires you to look for a set number of jobs each fortnight.  You must sign if you want money to live on (below the poverty line, of course).  There is no specific commitment from the job provider about what kind of assistance they’ll provide. 

They may start off by contacting an employer or two on your behalf. 

As time goes on, the consultant settles into the comfortable role of compliance officer – confirming that you have applied for the requisite number of jobs per fortnight and offering little other assistance.

Unsurprisingly, few disabled job seekers find work through this system.  It provides employment consultants with work, at government expense, and creates the illusion that the government is providing appropriate support to the disabled people it has judged able to work.

Over several years, both Liberal and Labor governments have tightened the rules for eligibility to the Disability Support Pension.  It’s become extremely difficult to get.  Both sides of government have made budget savings by putting more disabled people on unemployment benefits and denying us access to the Disability Support Pension. The Australian government has decided that more disabled people are required to work, even if only part time.

Many disabled people have some capacity to work and are, or would be, happy to do so if we could find an opportunity that was a good fit.

But those are hard to come by.

While governments of both stripes have agreed that more disabled people should work, they have taken little action to open up more suitable employment opportunities for disabled people.  It won’t happen by itself.

Over the same period that governments have required more disabled people to work, the percentage of disabled people employed in the public service has declined.  The government is employing fewer disabled people while forcing more of us to seek work.

Employers in the private sector haven’t become significantly more keen or more comfortable with employing disabled people either.  Some speak of lacking, “disability confidence”. Others make assumptions about what disabled people can and can’t do (usually focused on can’t) or don’t want to deal with the possibility of having to provide reasonable adjustments to allow a disabled employee to function effectively in the workplace. Employing a disabled person is something they see as a risk they’d rather not take.

We are at an impasse.  On the one hand the government pushes more disabled people into the employment market and on the other employers (including government) continue to prefer not to employ us.  As a result, many disabled people remain on the unemployment payment for years – endlessly required to seek work but with an ever-decreasing chance of securing it.

This cycle can be broken.  Unless it is, Australia’s unemployment rate could get stuck when the only people left on unemployment benefits are the disabled people that employers have chosen not to take on.

We need a massive cultural change

It’s worth remembering that as recently as 50 years ago, parents who gave birth to disabled children could be encouraged to place them in institutions and “have another family”.  Fortunately, that didn’t happen to my parents, but I know a few disabled people whose parents were encouraged to consider that choice.

Doctors who suggested that parents put their disabled children in institutions were often suggesting they forget about them.  Disabled people were warehoused – out of sight and out of mind. Society didn’t consider us worthy of a place in our own families, let alone in the workplace.

It’s become less standard to consign disabled people to institutions but it’s still not unheard of.

We still have disabled people under the age of 65 living in aged care facilities because they have nowhere else to live.

We still have, ‘group homes’, where people are living together not because they choose to but solely because they are all disabled.

We need to normalise disability access

To make it practical for disabled people to work, we need disability access to be normal, not exceptional. It needs to be routine not a special favour.

In the past 12 months we’ve seen the NSW, WA and SA governments opt out of a national commitment to a minimum standard of disability access in new domestic dwellings. Decisions like that make it harder for people with disability to live as ordinary members of the community. It also makes it harder for us to participate in the workforce.

If you live in a home that isn’t as accessible as you need it to be, it can mean that it takes you longer to get out the door every morning. That has an impact on what time you can get to work and how much energy you’ve got once you arrive. 

If you’re a wheelchair user who doesn’t live on the ground floor of your apartment building, the breakdown of a lift can mean you can’t get in and out of your home to get to work until it’s repaired. 

The number of accessible homes has a significant impact on whether people with limited mobility can reliably participate in the workforce.

The number of accessible homes in Australia is slowly growing but newly built homes are often unaffordable for disabled people.  We are more likely than average to be on low incomes.

Accessible homes aren’t reserved for disabled people either. Once they’ve been built, able bodied people often find that they enjoy the convenience that comes with an accessible home. It’s nice not to have to struggle up stairs with your shopping or your kids. People without mobility limitations can live in homes with stairs but thar doesn’t mean they leave accessible homes for those who need them.

A significant number of Australia’s railway stations remain inaccessible to wheelchair users. Lack of access to public transport makes it harder for people to have access to employment.

Huge numbers of workplaces and retail spaces also remain inaccessible to wheelchair users.  And how common are hearing loops to support people with hearing aids or Braille signage to support blind people?  Things are slowly improving but, In many respects, disabled people continue to be kept on the outer.

Employing disabled people alongside our non-disabled peers in the workplace requires huge changes – in the community as well as in the workforce..

We need job descriptions we can negotiate

By definition, disabled people are not average.  If we were, we wouldn’t be referred to as disabled.  But when it comes to employment, we are routinely thrown into a system that works for people who are average as if it should work for us.  It usually doesn’t.

Disabled people have a human right to access employment to improve our standard of living.  If we are to join the workforce in numbers, we need a disability employment system that works with disabled people to identify our employability skills, needs and interests and then negotiates suitable opportunities with employers.

The standard practice is for an employer to sit in their office writing a job description based on their needs and their assumptions about the capabilities of available workers. Unless an employer is deliberately thinking about employing a disabled person, the resulting job description will be biased towards a non-disabled person, because non disabled people are the majority of the population.                                                       

Employers need to be flexible about what’s required for a particular job and how it could be done.

We know that’s possible.

Remember when working from home was unusual? 

Then COVID arrived. 

Working from home became normal overnight. A lot of people with disabilities were simultaneously thrilled and furious. I heard people recount how they’d previously asked employers about working from home as a way to make their employment better suit the needs of their disability and either been told that it was impossible or made to feel like they were asking too much.

That changed quickly with COVID, not because it suddenly became more possible but because it became something that served the interests of the majority. 

There are a variety of ways to get things done. Employers need to be open to trying them.

It might mean rearranging where people work, to provide a physically accessible workspace. It might mean re-allocating responsibilities for tasks in ways that accommodate physical abilities. It might mean providing a worker with their own office space so that they can use voice to text software effectively (without distracting their co-workers).

It might even mean giving employers and disabled people the freedom to fail. Sometimes I don’t know whether I can do something until I try.   I need to experiment.  Employing people with disabilities isn’t currently normal in Australia. We don’t have huge amounts of experience to go on. We need the freedom to find out what works.

Employers always feel the pressure of the bottom line.  That’s likely to make them hesitant to try new strategies with no guarantee of success.

That’s why employers who take on disabled workers are often eligible for wage subsidies. They’re supposed to cover things like extra training costs. They’re supposed to make it easier for employers to take us on without feeling like there’s an unacceptable risk.

There’s no corresponding freedom for the disabled job seeker to try things out and see if they work. Job seekers can be penalised if they refuse a job that they’ve been offered. They can also be subject to a full week wait to receive a payment if they have left a job, “without a good reason”.  The job seeker doesn’t get to decide what counts as a good reason.

This easily creates a situation where a job seeker hesitates to be adventurous, because if it doesn’t work out for them, they don’t want to be stuck in a bad situation that somebody else has judged acceptable. We need to make it attractive and safe, not risky, for disabled Job seekers to try something new and see if it works.

We need jobs that offer us hours we can work

I don’t work full time because it’s essential that I take some time every day to exercise – not just to maintain my general health but to make sure I can continue to do ordinary things like put on my own shoes.  If I don’t keep up with those exercises, ordinary things like getting dressed and moving around get difficult fairly quickly, and I’m able to do even less.  Even missing one day makes a difference.

Some disabled people have less energy to do things than other people, or have to expend twice as much energy to achieve the same thing. For me, most everyday physical tasks like taking a shower, getting dressed and preparing meals take longer than they take other people.  As a result, I can’t offer the same amount of work hours as other people.

I often see ads for part time work where the position will become full-time in the future.  That’s great if what you really want is a full-time job.  If you need a part time one, and say so when they ask you in the interview, it will mean you are not going to be the preferred candidate.

I’ve been assessed as able to work 15 hours a week. It’s rare to see jobs advertised for 15 hours a week that I am otherwise able to do.

Part of the reason I started this blog is because writing is something I can do.  I’ve never really wanted to work for myself. In fact, starting my own business was something I specifically didn’t want to do but since becoming a wheelchair user I’ve spent a lot more time looking for work then getting paid to do it.  I had to try something new.

I like the fact that I no longer have to say, “unemployed” when I’m asked for my occupation.  “Writer” sounds much better.  I am also developing and demonstrating new skills, so whether I succeed in business or not, I’m improving my resume.  That’s something that doesn’t happen when you are forced to continue applying for jobs based on a skill set that employers continually reject.

Working for myself means no one else is deciding how long a particular task should take me. When I’m home on my own I can use voice to text to speed things up.  When I’m not, I type slowly.  My limitations don’t stop me from working at all, but they do have an impact on how much I can do and how quickly I can do it.  Of course, that makes it harder to develop a viable business but making the attempt is more satisfying than bashing my head against the brick wall of rejection.

We need realistic pathways

The government assesses people like me as “able to work”.  They don’t bother to assess our chances of actually securing work in competition with our non-disabled peers – and there’s the rub. When I look for work, I’m competing on a VERY uneven playing field, where my chances of success are slim.

Having a partial capacity to work means more than needing to work part time. It can mean that there are some jobs (perhaps a lot of jobs) a particular job seeker is unable to do.  If you can’t get some of the entry level jobs most people use to gain experience and get to the jobs they really want, you can’t get the demonstrated experience in various skills that employers demand for better jobs.

As, a wheelchair user, I can’t get a job waiting tables.

Being a waitress might not be a job that many people aspire to as their ideal, but it’s one that a lot of people start off in. 

 It provides an income and it provides the chance to develop and demonstrate skills.

A waitressing job enables you to demonstrate that you’re employable and reliable. It provides customer service experience. It provides cash handling experience. You might also learn food preparation and barista skills. You might develop staff training skills if, after a while, you become one of the more experienced staff. Perhaps the place where you work caters for events.  You might work with your employer to do some of the planning and develop some administrative or marketing skills.  These are all skills you can develop starting from a job that you probably got with no experience.

Now that we’re in a jobs boom, there are jobs being advertised with “no experience necessary” but as a wheelchair user, few of them are jobs I could do.  

Those of us who can’t get a start in hospitality or retail need other pathways to get experience and explore job options. 

Disabled people need to be offered traineeships for the jobs that other people get on the back of their experience in retail or hospitality. 

We need agreed skills for office jobs.  Apprentices learn trades on the job, combined with relevant study.  Office jobs could be made available to disabled people through a similar kind of structure – including a recognised qualification.  It could work for other kinds of jobs too.  It would provide a way for disabled people to develop and prove our skills – and earn an income at the same time. It would offer us a reasonable alternative to the opportunity the jobs in hospitality and retail offer to our peers.

We need government to lead by example

The government decides who is required to seek work and who isn’t. When the government decides that people who are disadvantaged in the employment market must participate in it, the government has a responsibility to make sure it is possible for those people to do so.

The disability employment rate in Australia hasn’t changed significantly in decades. Disabled job seekers don’t have the power to change it ourselves, though that seems to be the main plan.

Few disabled people are In a position to make hiring decisions.

Government needs to lead by example, not just in the number of disabled people they employ, but also by demonstrating best practice In creating and negotiating suitable employment opportunities for disabled people.

Disability Employment Services should also be leading by example.  I’ve spent years on unemployment benefits and never once met a disability employment consultant who told me they were disabled themselves. If Disability Employment Services don’t employ disabled people themselves, how do they expect to convince other employers to do so?

We need a safety net

Sometimes living with a disability is really hard. Sometimes working while you’re dealing with it really isn’t practical.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how willing you are to work, there are no suitable jobs available.

Supporting disabled people to work is good. Forcing disabled people to work or seek work against medical advice or when they simply can’t find anything Is cruel and discriminatory.

We need a system that acknowledges that.

We need a disability payment that people with permanent disabilities can move on and off as needed – without having to fill in pages of forms or be re-assessed.

When we are able to work and able to find a position, that’s great.  When we’re not, we shouldn’t be forced to live on payments below the poverty line. Disability is not laziness, and it shouldn’t be punished as if it is.  When someone’s disability prevents them from working, they deserve support.

Making changes to welcome disabled workers as part of the jobs boom will help Australia’s unemployment rate keep falling.  It will also change Australia.

Imagine Australia supporting disabled people to fulfil our potential.

Imagine the workplace ingenuity sparked by including workers with a different starting point.

Imagine never having to ask whether a venue or a train station is accessible.

Imagine the empathy and respect that would grow from the more diverse workforce.

Imagine disability employment being normal.

Imagine the difference.

What difference do you imagine? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below, or on social media.

Disability Pride invites people to include disabled people as equal members of the community.  Come along to the Inner West Disability Pride Fest in Newtown NSW, April 9 at 11am – opposite the station, or tune in to the livestream.  Hear disabled people’s stories and celebrate who we are.  It’ll be awesome!

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