Disability and Employment

Introduction

People with impairments encounter disadvantages when entering and remaining in the labour market. This is due to specific set principals and values that western society has on work been organised around maximising profit and the competition between workers. (Barnes, 2003 P. 1) These specific set of values and principles prevent people with impairments participating in the labour market as a result of the “environmental and cultural barriers associated with capitalism” (Barnes, 2003 P. 2).

In order to substantiate the disadvantages in the labour market for people with impairments, this essay will now examine these disadvantages by firstly reviewing the historic background of disability in the labour market, then by clarifying how education has hindered people with impairments participation in the labour market and ascertain the three main disadvantages people with impairments encounter when accessing or participating in the labour market.

Historic review of disability in the labour market

In the eighteenth century there was extensive developments in land commercialisation, agriculture and industrialisation that changed society economical and culturally. The move away from “cottage – based industries to factory – based systems” (Oliver and Barnes 1998, P. 30) led to paid labour market. Due to the fast paced work within factories being abled bodied was a necessity to work. As Ryan and Thomas state,

“The speed of factory work, the enforced discipline, the time keeping and production norms - all these were a highly unfavourable change from the slower, more self-determined and flexible methods of work into which many handicapped people had been integrated”.
(1980, P.101)

This led society being segregated...

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Oliver, M. and Barnes, C. (1998) “Disabled people and society policy: From exclusion to inclusion”, London: Longman.

Ryan, J. and Thomas, F. (1980), “The Politics of Mental Handicap”, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (1974) Union of the Physcially Impaired Against Segregation: Policy Statement (1974/5), [online], available: http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/UPIAS-fundamental-principles.pdf [accessed: 06 Apr 2014]

United Nations (2006) United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, [online], available: http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/conventionfull.shtml [accessed: 04 Mar 2014]