People with disabilities face considerable difficulties securing and sustaining employment and problems of underemployment. Disabled people with tertiary qualifications experience the same level of unemployment as non-disabled people without qualifications and in general disabled people are twice as likely to be unemployed as non-disabled people. Data on the employment situation of disabled people is limited.
A Southland participant using a wheelchair said “you have to work harder to prove your worth”. “At work I find that I try to keep one step ahead of everyone, always planning and preparing in advance so that in my role I don’t appear to be incompetent, needy or different from anyone else.” A disabled person from Auckland talked about “the feeling that you need never to be a burden, always reasonable, as good as everyone else but better”. Another described this as self-stigmatising, “it’s really tough and burns you out”. A deaf job-seeker in Hawke’s Bay said “All they look at is what we can’t do, not what we can do.”
The people we spoke to indicated that successfully gaining employment or indeed an interview is a major challenge. A group of Deaf in Hawke’s Bay talked about the multiple barriers inherent in the recruitment process. They talked about assistance needed for preparing Curricula Vitae (CVs), phoning prospective employers and organising an interpreter for the rare occasions when they got a job interview. There is no resident sign interpreter in Hawke’s Bay. Sadly the interpreter was often perceived by prospective employers as a support person rather than as an impartial interpreter.
Fears that lack of hearing created a higher risk in terms of health and safety were also prevalent. We were told Deaf people “listen with their eyes” and are just as aware (if not more) of what is going on in their surroundings than hearing people. “The primary issue is lack of understanding because if there is understanding then there’s a will on the part of employers to provide the tools or provide the environment that is required to help someone with hearing loss work,” said Chris Peters, a journalist with a hearing disability.
Employers appeared to be unwilling to give disabled people a go and were apprehensive about what employing a person with a disability might entail. A Christchurch group told us that a critical task is to “reduce the fear about what disability might mean for employers. Accommodating special needs doesn’t have to be a big deal, everyone has special needs.”
Incorrect assumptions were made about what an individual disabled person might need to make employment work. Conversations about the practical implications of employment were avoided. For example, a group of blind people meeting in Wellington told us that interviewers did not ask about how guide dogs might behave at work and instead assumed that the dog would be as boisterous and disruptive as their family pet.
We observed that employers were much more likely to be supportive and accommodate a person’s needs if they had acquired their disability after being employed, because the employer and co-workers already have a relationship with the person and want to make it work. In one case a 40-year-old who had suffered a stroke took 18 months to return to work but when an approach was made to his employer, he was welcomed back and a job created with new boundaries reflecting the genuine skills of the stroke victim. Employers with a disabled family member are also more likely to be open to employing a disabled person. We heard that the state sector could do more to model good practice in providing equal employment opportunities to disabled people.
One participant summed up the need for attitudinal change by employers when he said, “If we were to look at [disabled] people as an investment rather than look at them as a pathology or as a disability and if we were to look at people’s abilities rather than disabilities, I think we would be in a different spot”.
A particularly vexed issue is whether or not to disclose experience of mental illness. An Auckland group of people with experience of mental health issues are of the view that disclosure on application forms or unexplained gaps in CVs means they are unlikely to be offered a job interview. However, non-disclosure carries the risk that their needs will not be accommodated should they become unwell, and in extreme cases be dismissed for dishonesty. Legal considerations include the appropriateness of questions in the application form and the steps taken to avoid discriminatory practices. One participant with experience of mental illness said “The crux of the argument around disclosure is that there is still a lot of stigma around employability - there’s the view that if you’ve got a mental illness you’re actually not employable. You can’t handle stress, you’re potentially dangerous to yourself and to others, you are a lot of extra work, you’re unreliable, you will take lots of time off.”