People with disabilities will continue to be disadvantaged at work and disproportionately affected by poverty unless the European Commission turns its guidelines for employers into rules, trade unions say ahead of tomorrow's International Day for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (December 3).
EU data shows 51% of people with disabilities are in employment, compared to 75% for the total population, and 29% live at risk of poverty compared to 18% among the total population.
The European Commission has published a ‘strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities’, which included a package to improve labour market outcomes of persons with disabilities. It included initiatives for reasonable accommodation at work and changing hiring practices.
However, the positive measures in the plan are merely guidelines and therefor rely on the goodwill of employers. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) call on the EU to bring forward binding initiatives to improve the working and living conditions of persons with disabilities:
- Ensuring reasonable accommodation at work
- Retaining people with disabilities in employment & preventing disabilities associated with chronic diseases;
- Alternative employment models for persons with disabilities;
- Ensuring compatibility of wages and disability entitlements;
- Supporting mobility by guaranteeing the continuity of disability entitlements to persons with disabilities relocating for employment in another EU country.
ETUC Confederal Secretary Tea Jarc said:
“The barriers faced by people with disabilities in the world of work mean they disproportionately live in poverty. That is clearly unacceptable and therefore cannot be left to the goodwill of individual employers to solve.
“At a time when employers’ representatives have called equal pay for women a ‘burden’, we know that organisations and companies aren’t going to make the changes needed unless they are legally obliged to do so.
“That is why trade unions call on the Commission to turn its guidelines for employers into binding obligations. The rights of people with disabilities cannot continue to be an optional extra and Europe cannot afford to let a huge pool of talent go unused when we are facing a sustained labour shortage.”
