reflection it's a thoroughly bad. It may allow a few additional disabled
people into employment but it opens the way to exploitation of some of the
most vulnerable.
If you have a minimum wage law then it must include everybody, not just
those strong enough to defend themselves against unscrupulous employers.
There are ways of levelling the playing field for disabled people in the
area of employment with anti-discrimination laws having a place and govt
support schemes to fund any additional costs an employer might incur also
being very important but I suspect that in times when jobs are not easy to
find anybody who isn't a gold-plated candidate (and that, of course,
includes disabled people) are at a marked disadvantage.
Something that I have observed over the decades in the UK is how far too
many disabled people do seem to be content to live on and campaign for
higher state benefits rather than pushing harder for jobs. It isn't
universal, of course, as I can quote plenty of examples of severely impaired
people working hard and earning a decent living but far too many have
encountered and far too many of the organisations representing them do focus
heavily on levels of benefits.
I don't know how many employment consultants in job centres specialise in
dealing with disabled people these days but back in the sixties there
certainly were officers, DROs, who dealt with disabled people and BPROs who
specialised in helping blind people to find jobs. Society and disabled
people themselves *expected* to work and many employers were very open to
employing them.
And, of course, for those whose impairments made them unsuitable for
employment in "open industry" there were networks of sheltered workshops
where they worked to the best of their ability and received a subsidised
wage. They had all those intangible benefits of employment even if the
public subsidised them to some extent they had the dignity of knowing they
were making a contribution.
From my more recent involvement that has all changed. Society and disabled
people seem to have lower aspirations and apparently employers are less
open-minded.
Still, making employing disabled people an exception to the minimum wage
rules is not the answer.
John Waghorne
1 comment:
I agree with everything that Mr. Davies is saying.
I'm 49 years old, have Asperger's syndrome and have never had a job.
I need to be able to offer an employer something so that he will at least just consider giving me a job; and I reckon that his being able to pay me less than statutory minimum wage might just do it.
I doubt I would be any worse off than actually being paid a proper wage because of the complex interactions between the various benefits I receive and the amount of money I have to pay to social services for my care. In effect a wages subsidy would be in operation.
I desperately want to work, and need to work, so that I can fully contribute to, and participate in, society; and strive to become the best person I'm capable of becoming - and the minimum wage legislation is hindering me in my search for employment.
By the way, I agree with you when you write that far too many advocates for disabled people push far too hard to get more benefits for their clients and don't seem to want to get them into work - this is because their jobs probably depend on having a large client group of dependent people.
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