Paper Presented to the "Views Ahead" Conference, Bratislava, Slovak Republic,
28-29 October 2005
by Colin Low, Fred Reid and Philippa Simkiss
The paper presented by Rodolfo Cattani at the EBU conference on employment held
in Paris in July 2003 drew attention to the scale of economic inactivity among
disabled people in the European Union. He began by showing that a non-disabled
person of working age in Europe has a 66 % chance of finding employment or
developing a business. For a person with a moderate disability the probability
is 44 % and for a person with a severe disability (including blind and partially
sighted people) only 25 %. Only 30.5 % of the disabled population of working age
is employed. Moreover national policies in place in the 1990s for increasing the
employment activity of disabled people made little difference to these
proportions.
In 1997, the Amsterdam Treaty for the first time gave the European Union a
competence to combat discrimination, and in November 2000 the Framework
Directive on Non-Discrimination in Employment and Occupation was adopted by the
European Council. These were landmark developments in European legislation. The
Framework Directive in particular applied important principles of
non-discrimination to the field of employment for disabled people: the right to
employment and to equal opportunities in recruitment, access to vocational
training and guidance, career advancement, retraining, practical work
experience, specific employment rights such as dismissal pay, direct and
indirect discrimination, reasonable accommodation, positive actions to promote
employment, legal support, remedies and sanctions. dr. Cattani rightly stated
that "this directive could be an efficient tool to help blind and partially
sighted people to improve and diversify their employment perspectives".
The European Employment Strategy (EES) was designed as the main tool to ensure
that Member States help achieve EU-LEVEL employment policy priorities.
Key dates in the evolution of the EES are:
1997 -- the Amsterdam Treaty gave the European Commission the power to prepare a
set of common guidelines. For the first time promoting employment became an EU
objective.
1997 -- the Luxembourg European Council launched the EES and adopted the first
set of annual employment guidelines for Member States, focused on four "pillars"
- employability, entrepreneurship, adaptability and equal opportunities. In this
case equal opportunities referred to ensuring equal access to jobs for women and
men and equal treatment at work.
2000 -- the Lisbon European Council set the aim that Europe would become the
most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world within 10 years, and
added new "horizontal objectives" of full employment, a better quality of work,
lifelong learning and partnerships with social partners (employers, employers'
organisations and trades unions). The Council also identified quantitative
targets to achieve full employment.
2002 -- the Barcelona European Council decided to simplify the EES.
2003 -- the Spring European Council agreed a streamlined EES doing away with the
four pillars and horizontal objectives. In their place the EES has three
overarching objectives:
full employment (everyone who wants a job gets a job)
quality and productivity at work (opportunities for training, terms and
conditions at work, how efficient we are)
cohesion and an inclusive labour market (opportunities to all).
These objectives were supported by ten guidelines:
1. Active measures for the unemployed and (economically) inactive
2. Job creation and entrepreneurship
3. The promotion of adaptability and mobility in the labour market
4. The promotion of lifelong learning
5. The promotion of active ageing
6. Gender equality
7. Combating discrimination against people at a disadvantage in the labour
market
8. Making work pay through incentives
9. Transforming undeclared work into regular employment
10. Addressing regional employment disparities
Of these the most important for disabled people was no. 7 "combating
discrimination against people at a disadvantage in the labour market". The
Commission stressed the need for the adoption of quantifiable targets wherever
possible and better governance of the EES through more involvement of social
partners and civil society.
Finally in 2004 The Presidency of the European Council identified more and
better jobs as the most pressing issue facing the EU.
The EES is designed as the main tool to give direction to, and ensure
co-ordination of, the employment policy priorities to which Member States should
subscribe at EU level. Heads of State and Government agreed on a framework for
action based on the commitment from Member States to establish a set of common
objectives and targets for employment policy. This co-ordination of national
employment policies at EU level is built around several components:
a): following a proposal from the Commission, the European Council every year
agrees on a series of guidelines setting out common priorities for Member
States' employment policies.
but): every Member State draws up an annual National Action Plan detailing the
steps taken to incorporate the guidelines into national policy and how the State
is implementing the EES.
can): The Commission and the Council jointly examine each National Action Plan
and present a Joint Employment Report.
The Commission then presents a new proposal to revise the Employment Guidelines
accordingly for the following year.
There is an annual policy cycle:
January -- Broad economic policy guidelines and Joint Employment Implementation
report released
March -- Spring European Council meets to discuss economic, social and
employment policy
April -- European Commission publishes EU guidelines package proposing action in
various policy areas
June -- Employment strategy experts from Member States and representatives from
Council of Ministers adopt employment guidelines (which apply across EU) and
recommendations (country specific), which are endorsed by European Council
October -- Member States finalise their National Action Plans in consultation
with stakeholders
The EES operates under the "Open Method of Co-ordination" (OMC). That is rather
than relying on legislative directives, EES implementation is based on
non-binding codes of conduct and voluntary networks designed to improve the
effectiveness of national policies. The OMC fosters the sharing of good practice
and partnership building but depends upon Member States being willing to
co-operate. There is a danger that national governments use the National Action
Plans to present what they are already doing through domestic employment
policies rather than use the process as a learning opportunity. Thus the
potential of the policy cycle to result in an EES fully implemented across all
Member States depends heavily upon the level of engagement with stakeholders.
Following from the EES, the Commission produced a policy paper in 2005 entitled
"Disability Mainstreaming in the European Employment Strategy". This recognised
that "People with disabilities are one of the groups who are disadvantaged in
most Member States as regards participation in the labour market".
It statz: "in its policies for disadvantaged groups, the Commission follows the
approach of mainstreaming. Mainstreaming means that the needs of disadvantaged
people need to be taken into account in the design of all policies and measures,
and that action for disadvantaged people is not limited to those policies and
measures which are specifically addressing their needs".
"The legal background for the need to apply the principle of mainstreaming in
policies is to be found in the EU directive against discrimination prohibiting
discrimination in employment and occupation on the grounds of disability and
other grounds".
"With regard to disability in particular, the Directive is in many ways a
ground-breaking piece of legislation".
As one in six of the EU working-age population has a disability of some sort,
and given the low employment rate of this group, increasing the employment rate
of disabled people contributes significantly to the Lisbon objective of an
employment rate of 70 % by 2010. People with disabilities are a much-underused
source of labour in Europe, which could contribute to overall economic growth.
In the new guidelines, three priorities have been identified on which action
should concentrate in order to address the policy objectives: attracting and
retaining more people in employment, increasing labour supply and modernising
social protection systems; improving adaptability of workers and enterprises;
and increasing investment in human capital through better education and skills.
The paper says that the guidelines corresponding to these priorities bear a
great potential for introducing the mainstreaming disability approach and goes
on to analyse each of the guidelines in this respect.
On attracting and retaining more people in employment, increasing labour supply
and modernising social protection systems, it says: "People with disabilities
constitute a group which could offer extra labour supply. This becomes even more
relevant since the share of the working-age population is decreasing due to
demographic trends. In this context, it is important that policies target both
people with disabilities looking actively for a job as well as people with
disabilities who have given up the job search."
Speaking of retention it says: "Positive actions such as a period of leave
combined with further training, change of their job descriptions or alternative
assignments should be envisaged before considering the person to be invalid. In
this context, it is important to propose these measures at an early stage.
Measures to address this issue should therefore include, among others,
initiatives targeted at employers to ensure that their human resource policies
also take more and better account of the needs of disabled employees."
The guidelines stress the need that Member States, in taking action, should
ensure good governance of employment policies. Implementing disability
mainstreaming in an effective way requires the active participation of
employers, trade unions, public authorities, civil society and other relevant
actors. This active participation should be organised in a systematic and
structural way in order to ensure continuity in the pursuit of this important
goal.
In philosophy the Disability Mainstreaming paper is almost unexceptionable. Each
Member State is to increase the number of disabled people in employment by
working through the guidelines. Nevertheless there are at least three reasons
for thinking that it falls some way short of what is required as far as the
employment of blind and partially sighted people is concerned.
First, blind and partially sighted people are among the hardest groups of
disabled people to employ. In the UK their unemployment rate is 75 % compared to
51 % for disabled people generally. If Member States are to make a significant
impact on this figure, they must, as the EU paper itself recognises, build
programmes of rehabilitation, training and other support into work which are
sensitive to the particular needs of visually impaired people.
Second, such programmes are more expensive. For example, it costs the RNIB's
training grade scheme three times more to bring a visually impaired person to
job readiness than it costs the statutory empoyment services to bring a sighted
disabled person to the same point. This is not a reason for putting visually
impaired people to the back of the queue, yet this is exactly what governments
are doing. Thus in the UK, Incapacity Benefit reform designed to get people off
benefits and into work is focused on people with muscular-skeletal and
cardio-vascular problems - the most numerous - as well as people with mental
illness, while visually impaired people are exempted from the personal capacity
to work test of eligibility for Incapacity Benefit and thus deprived of the
all-important counselling and support they need if they are ever to gain a
foothold in the labour market.
Third, taken together, these factors mean that at least half of all visually
impaired people will need supported employment, i.e. they are unable to work the
normal hours for the standard rate of pay and will require intermediate labour
market solutions involving specialised environments or regimes or targeted
measures of special support if they are ever to stand any realistic chance of
working. Those concerned include visually impaired people with severe additional
disabilities and/or ageing - some of the most vulnerable amongst the disabled.
"Disability Mainstreaming in the European Employment Strategy" could in theory
make employment a possibility for this group, cf. what the paper has to say
about positive actions to promote retention such as periods of leave, retraining
and job restructuring. But Member States have shown virtually no interest in
this kind of supported inclusion.
Rodolfo Cattani's conclusions seem very much to the point. He identifies a
crucial shift of emphasis in the EU's strategy from special provision to a
rights-based programme for inclusion of disabled people in the mainstream labour
force. He stresses, however, that "blind and partially sighted persons
constitute a highly vulnerable group amongst the totality of disabled people",
notwithstanding the achievements of those with good education and skills. He
warns correctly of "the impetuous evolution of technology". This will not
automatically swell the ranks of blind and partially sighted people in
mainstream production and could even cause a reduction. He remarks pertinently:
"For totally blind people and for people who have visual and learning
disabilities, the future is quite problematic, because they are simply refused
if employers can hire a disabled person with a less severe impairment". He
therefore calls upon EBU "to analyse very carefully the changes in the labour
market, developing a specific long-term strategy in order to equip our national
organisations with the necessary knowledge and experience to use at national
level".
So the paper is good as far as it goes. What it says is welcome. It is what it
leaves out that is the problem. It does not really address the issue of
supported employment and the employment continuum. In going down the
mainstreaming route, it limits its focus to those who are easiest to employ.
This makes sense in terms of raising the level of employment to make Europe the
most competitive knowledge-based econony in a globalised world economy, but it
does not make sense for a low-incidence group like the visually impaired, many
of whom are amongst the most vulnerable disabled people who are hardest to
employ.
Why should states put themselves out to get such people into employment against
the odds in an increasingly competitive environment? Our answer to that question
is "citizenship" - it is the right of every disabled person as a citizen that
the state should use what Galbraith called its countervailing power to support
them into work. This is not a difficult concept to promote under the European
Social Model, but can the European Social Model survive in a more competitive
Europe gearing itself up to withstand the pressures of globalisation? It may not
survive complettly intact, but we would argue that the kind of rights that go
with citizenship have to survive if a Europe in crisis is to retain the contact
with its citizens which alone can give it legitimacy.
There is something of this in "Disability Mainstreaming in the European
Employment Strategy" when it speaks of strengthening social and territorial
cohesion: "Most social expenditure on health and social policies represents an
investment in human resources with positive economic effects. Social policies
should have sufficient financial resources in order to contribute to an
increased labour supply and to be able to alleviate the difficulties faced by
disabled people in accessing or remaining in the labour market. Access to a job,
ensuring opportunities to acquire the skills necessary to facilitate
participation in the labour market and remain in the labour market (reflecting
in particular the wide use of ICT and the move towards a knowledge-based
society), and the possibility to progress in terms of pay and qualifications are
major factors for promoting social inclusion". This is something EBU should seek
to build on with a view to persuading the EU to develop a more diversified
employment strategy that does not rely exclusively on the mainstreaming
approach.
The new EES does refer to themes such as equal opportunities and inclusive
labour market but there is no overall target relating to employment of disabled
people, and the target related to women only materialised after heavy lobbying
by women's organisations in Brussels. The promotion of gender issues through
National Action Plans has come about because of pressure over decades from the
women's movement and civil society.
Having a separate guideline within the EES on gender equality has made a big
difference because the European Commission can assess Member States' progress on
implementation within this specific area and make suggestions for further work
if necessary. EBU could seek to strengthen EES guidelines. It is worth pushing
for a disability target on the model of the gender target as a way of holding
policy makers to their commitment in the EES guidelines.
The disability lobby through the European Disability Forum has not had the same
influence as the women's movement, partly because they have only recently
started putting more effort into employment issues. The disability movement
should be striving to achieve a similar emphasis on disabled people, and EBU
could contribute to this.
The new EES guidelines do refer to the fact that access to the labour market is
a priority with respect to people with disabilities and two of the guidelines
are particularly relevant.
Guideline 7 refers to promoting integration and combating discrimination against
people at a disadvantage in the labour market. It states that "Member States
will foster the integration of people facing particular difficulties on the
labour market, such as early school leavers, low-skilled workers, people with
disabilities, immigrants, and ethnic minorities, by developing their
employability, increasing job opportunities and preventing all forms of
discrimination against them. In particular, policies will aim to achieve by 2010
a significant reduction in each Member State in the unemployment gaps for people
at a disadvantage, according to any national targets and definitions".
The European Commission may find it politically difficult to get specific
targets agreed. EBU members could lobby both Member States and the Commission to
establish a specific target on the reduction of the employment gap between
disabled and non-disabled people.
Guideline 8 stresses the need to make work pay, stating that "Member States will
reform financial incentives with a view to making work attractive and
encouraging men and women to seek, take up and remain in work. In this context
Member States should develop appropriate policies with a view to reducing the
number of working poor. They will consider tax and benefit systems and their
interaction with a view to eliminating unemployment, poverty and inactivity
traps, and encouraging the participation of women, low-skilled workers, older
workers, people with disabilities and those furthest from the labour market in
employment".
There is great interest within the European Commission in collecting experiences
from member states. Disability is not a homogeneous phenomenon but in the past
the main focus has been on mobility disability. EBU could work to ensure that
all impairments are considered at policy level, highlighting economic as well as
social arguments to satisfy the EU that it is in the state's interest to promote
productive work for these groups.
The Commission should work with stakeholders such as the disability movement to
discuss how stakeholders experience policies and how they impact on people. EBU
members could use National Action Plans (NAP's) to raise disability issues such
as integration in the labour market at Member State level. As we have seen, a
major criticism of the EES is that it does not recognise the importance of an
employment continuum that seeks to provide support for those who are furthest
from the labour market and need additional support. Instead the EES focuses on
getting people into mainstream employment. This then impacts on other EU areas
of activity such as Social Fund priorities. EBU should work to correct this
emphasis.
Maintaining a focus on the European Parliament is also crucial as this is the
most democratic body.
The European Social Fund (ESF) has been developed as a tool for delivering the
EES. NGO's and voluntary sector organisations have been active in gaining access
to ESF funding to support the delivery of projects that meet ESF requirements,
which in turn are all based on EES principles.
Voluntary organisations tend to work with those who are socially excluded with
the result that ESF money has been used to target disadvantaged and
hard-to-reach groups. In this way the voluntary sector has worked to promote the
convergence of employment and social inclusion policies, for example by
pioneering work to increase equality of opportunity, focusing attention on
pre-vocational skills training and developing opportunities in pre-labour market
activities. These elements are key to implementation of the EES guidelines so it
is vital that Member States take the opportunity of National Action Plan
consultations to learn from NGO and voluntary sector stakeholders. After all the
voluntary sector has the expertise to deliver to individuals at the local
community level and has built up an extensive infrastructure and partnership
network for this purpose, something that national governments would do well to
note.
The EES is the main tool used by the European Commission to influence Member
States' employment policies and monitor how they are implementing EU policies at
national level. The new, simpler EES comprises three overarching objectives and
there are lots of ways that EBU and its members could influence EES
implementation and development. "Disability Mainstreaming" disclaims any
coercive power over National Action Plans. The EBU must therefore take up issues
at national level through its member organisations and lobby both national
governments and the institutions of the European Union.
At the Paris employment conference in July 2003 Rodolfo Cattani laid out a clear
programme of action for EBU in the employment field which has been accepted by
the EBU Board as follows:
1 EBU should seek to ensure that the requirements of blind and partially sighted
people are clearly recognised, both by EDF and by the EU Commission.
2 Enhanced EU cooperation to promote labour market incentives within the social
protection systems. In the case of people with disabilities, these measures have
to be tailored according to individual needs and capacities. They should be
accompanied by a comprehensive set of supports such as wage subsidies to be
combined with earned income, adapted work environments and personal support at
the workplace when needed.
3 A major element of the new European Employment Strategy should be the
visibility of disability. This entails mainstreaming, but with the important
proviso that disability specific policies are coordinated with the general
mainstream actions.
4 Inclusion of social clauses in public procurement legislation. Employment of
people with disabilities should be considered as a positive additional factor
for the award of a public contract.
5 The issue of job retention is extremely important for those persons who become
disabled during their working life. They need accommodation in the workplace and
"disability leave" - a period of time to get better oriented in the new working
conditions.
6 It is important to clarify that a disabled person who obtains a job should not
be penalised by benefit traps. On the contrary, employment and participation
should be encouraged by ensuring the necessary financial security, especially
for those unable to earn a full income. Compensation for the extra costs
incurred by disabled workers in connection with their employment, as well as
mobility costs, should also be met.
7 Measures facilitating a reconciliation between professional and family
responsibilities should be developed in order to support mothers and fathers of
disabled children. The possibility to take leave should also be extended to
cover those looking after disabled family members regardless of their age.
In the light of the Bratislava "Views Ahead" conference, this should now be
summarised and updated as follows: EBU should lobby at national level, with EDF
and the European institutions for:
- Full acceptance of and practical support for the notion of the employment
continuum;
- A specific disability guideline in the developing European Employment
Strategy;
- Quantitative targets for the employment of disabled people;
- Disability leave;
- Recognition in public procurement legislation of the employment of disabled
people as a positive additional factor in the awarding of public contracts;
- The full involvement of ngo's in the development of the European Employment
Strategy.
Reflections on the European Employment Strategy. 2004. Edited by Guy Palmer and
Suriya Edwards, New Policy Institute. wwwddnpiddorgdduk
More and Better Jobs. 2004. New Policy Institute.
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