Are Employers Limiting Disabled People's Futures? Young Campaigners Investigate Job Seeking, UK

Main Category: Muscular Dystrophy / ALS
Article Date: 23 Mar 2010 - 4:00 PDT

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Over 200 young disabled campaigners are launching an undercover investigation into employment today (Tuesday 23 March), to find out whether disabled job seekers are still facing discrimination.

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 should have improved equality in employment, but 15 years on many job seekers with a disability say they still feel they are facing adversity. Shocking figures from The Employers Forum on Disability show the poverty rate for disabled adults in the UK is 30 per cent, double that of non-disabled UK adults.

Trailblazers, a campaigning group for young disabled people run by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, will be revealing any inequality in employment with a full, undercover investigation which launches today (Tuesday).

Trailblazers believe disabled people and their non-disabled peers deserve exactly the same chances at finding employment, but statistics show that:

· twice as many UK disabled adults are living in poverty (30 per cent) as non-disabled UK adults;
· there are 1.3 million disabled people in the UK who want to work and are available for work but cannot find a job. One in five unemployed disabled people in the UK want to work, compared to one in 15 unemployed non-disabled people;
· only half of working-age disabled people are in work, compared with 80 per cent of working-age, non-disabled people;
· average pay per hour for disabled employees is £11.08, but for non-disabled employees is £12.30.

Trailblazers from across the UK will be contributing to this new employment report and putting employers and businesses under the spotlight to see how disability friendly they really are. They will be visiting job centres and recruitment centres, and completing surveys. Finding work is a big issue for all young people in the current economic climate, but for young disabled people the challenge can be even greater, as Trailblazers told us.

Jagdeep Sehmbi, 26, is from Birmingham and has limb girdle muscular dystrophy, a condition which causes the muscles in her shoulders, arms, legs and hips to waste. She said:

A couple of times I've been invited to job interviews where they've then contacted me to say the building isn't accessible for my wheelchair. So they've just had to be called off.

Jennifer Gallacher, 27, is from Middlesbrough and has spinal muscular atrophy, a progressive muscle wasting condition. She said:

I wanted to be a teacher and in my interviews for the teaching course I was asked a lot of questions about how I would manage being in a wheelchair and getting around the classroom. I knew I could manage it - I now have a job as a teaching assistant - but they had no experience of disability and couldn't understand how it would work.

I still think there is inequality in employment for people with a disability. You just have to look around - how many people with a disability do you see in most workplaces?

The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign's Trailblazers project manager Bobby Ancil said:

We are hoping our investigation will show there is equality in employment for disabled people, but the stories we've heard so far suggest there is still discrimination going on.

The Disability Discrimination Act should have made sure that disabled people had as good a chance at finding employment as their non-disabled peers, but 15 years on we are still hearing this is not always the case.

Hopefully the Trailblazers report will highlight some of these issues and be a step forward in making sure people with a disability have a fair chance at getting a job like everyone else.

The Trailblazers employment investigation will be ongoing for the next few months and the findings will be published in a report in June.

Source
The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign

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