The New Zealand government has announced some changes to its benefit system, and while I haven’t gone through the details yet I wanted to use it as an opportunity to discuss issues around work and disability.
In New Zealand the sickness benefit is available for people who are unable to work due to sickness, injury, disability or pregnancy. The invalids benefit is available for people who are permanently and severely restricted in their capacity for work because of a sickness, injury or disability (why the difference? I don’t know. Although it’s made even more pointed by the fact that the Invalids benefit is paid more. I’m lying I do know that it’s a nasty sort of moralistic division between really deserving, and possibly shirking poor).
The Ministry of Social Welfare has announced that more ‘services’ will be offered to people on sickness or invalids benefit, to help them get jobs. The ‘services’ currently provided by Social Welfare focus on teaching people how to look for a job and matching up people and jobs (I’m being very generous with my description here). By making such a big deal of offering these services to people on the sickness and invalid’s benefits (and later forcing people to use them) the government is saying that they think the main things people on the invalids and sickness benefits need to get into jobs is access to these services.
I say bullshit.* I’m going to explore the actual barriers that stop people who are sick, injured, disabled and pregant from getting a job.
The most obvious barrier is the sickness, injury, disability, or pregnancy. To get on the sickness or invalids benefit you have to have a doctor sign off saying that you are unable to work, so it’s not just a barrier – it’s a medically certified barrier.
There are all sorts of things that the government as a whole could do to ensure that people who are sick, injured, disabled or pregnant can participate fully in society. For example, many health conditions are exacerbated by living in low-quality housing that isn’t properly heated (read most NZ houses). The government could do something about this, both by providing more, warmer, state houses, and by instituting better building standards.
What about stress? Many (most?) chornic healthy conditions are exacerbated by stress. Poverty is stressful (and anyone who is on these benefits is poor). Dealing with social welfare is stressful (I’ve known people suffer from serious health relapses due to the stress of trying to deal with WINZ). There are many thing that the government as a whole, and WINZ in particular could do to improve the health of many people who are sick, injured or disabled. Why aren’t they starting there?
Lets move away from the sickness, injury, disability or pregnancy for a bit. After all to focus on those is still to imply that it’s a problem with the person that they are not currently employed, and that’s not what I believe. There is a huge amount of unreasonable prejudice against hiring people who are sick, disabled, or injured. Everyone I know who has fitted in those categories has had a much harder time finding a job than similarly qualified and capable people who don’t. Why not start by working on the people with the prejudice, rather than ask people who are discriminated against to jump through more hoops?
That’s only the start though, because it’s not just the unreasonable prejudice that is the problem, it’s the prejudice that is considered totally reasonable. For example, if someone had a chronic health condition that didn’t stop them working a forty hour week most of the time, but that flared up a few times a year and the worker required a couple of weeks off a time, then it would be considered perfectly reasonable not to hire them. Or if someone had a full-time job and then developed a health condition which meant that they could only work three days a week, it’d be perfectly legal to fire them.
WINZ is obsessed with work as the be all and end all of people’s contribution to society. But we only get to contribute to society on employer’s times. Employers don’t have to (and generally don’t) take on workers whose health allows them to work some of the time.
This is ridiculous. Why do we let our economic system dictate our participation in society, rather than organise an economic system that allows everyone to participate? Almost everyone can do some useful and meaningful work, if they’re allowed to do it on their terms. The fact that it doesn’t work like that, that we aren’t all able to contribute according to our ability is not the problem of individual people, who have sicknesses, injuries, or disabilities, which don’t fit employer’s wants.
* For the sake of clarity I also want to emphasise that these ‘services’ are generally not what unemployed people need to get jobs either. I think changing the Reserve Bank Act would do more to lower unemployment than all the ‘work4u’ seminars in the universe.
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Because the benefit/burden ratio is different. It takes more work to reform an entire society than to change a smaller group of society. That doesn’t by any means imply it’s “good” or “acceptable” etc, but if one doesn’t have the luxury of working without regard to resources (most governments don’t) then it’s a consideration.
Semantics question here: I know “prejudice” technically means simply that we prejudge someone for good or bad. But the common use as you know is that prejudice is 1) bad, and 2) inappropriate. So in common use, “reasonable prejudice” seems to be an oxymoron. Are you using it in the common or technical manner?
Because it might BE perfectly reasonable not to hire them. At least, it would be perfectly reasonable not to hire them, of someone else has equal qualifications and no health problem. Altruism isn’t usually a good enough reason.
…or pay them less. But if you have a job which (as some jobs do) can’t easily be done by a part time worker, then, well, whatcha going to do?
I agree with you that it’s not the fault of the sick/disabled individuals that they happen to be sick/disabled. I don’t think, though, that the common claim “their sickness/disability doesn’t really matter in their work” is especially accurate in many situations, and i think that position makes us less likely to find an actual solution to the problem.
Lets move away from the sickness, injury, disability or pregnancy for a bit. After all to focus on those is still to imply that it’s a problem with the person that they are not currently employed, and that’s not what I believe. There is a huge amount of unreasonable prejudice against hiring people who are sick, disabled, or injured. Everyone I know who has fitted in those categories has had a much harder time finding a job than similarly qualified and capable people who don’t. Why not start by working on the people with the prejudice, rather than ask people who are discriminated against to jump through more hoops?
I don’t think I understand your post, at all. Why would any employer hire a potential employee who is sick, disabled, injured, or pregant over a potential employee who is in good health or not pregnant? Any worker who is not able to work at full capacity while they are on the clock is a drain to the overall productivity of the company and the department they are in. And that means less profit for the employers, and that other workers will have to pick up the slack by doing the others work as well as their own. But then I may be thinking of different types of jobs than you are. My job requires a great deal of physical activity, it would tick me off big time if someone was hired who could not do the work or who called in sick on a regular basis because I would be expected to do my work and thiers as well.
mousehounde, part of the thing is that generally employees are not just identical cogs; they have different strengths and weaknesses, and it’s not always as simple as a choice between a physically less capable person and another person who is identical except also entirely able bodied. a person who is less able bodied or who sometimes needs to call in sick might have a lot of knowledge that other employees don’t have and still be an overall benefit to the company.
another part of it is, what’s reasonable to expect of people? a subset of people for a subset of their lives can work 40, 60, 80 hours a week, week in and week out, without needing time off. but many people cannot. yet those people still have skills and abilities. is it good business sense to act as if they don’t exist? doesn’t it ignore a potentially valuable resource?
finally, companies can look at how their overall workflow is structured, and revamp the workflow to accommodate people with different needs. it sounds like in your job there are exactly two people who do your work, and you are working at full physical capacity. what if your job were different, so that you did the physical stuff only part of the time, and other things part of the time? what if that meant there were more people at the company qualified to do the physical stuff? then if someone were unavailable to do that, you wouldn’t be the one taking up all the slack. frankly, it’s poor business practice to work anything at full capacity all the time, whether it is a person, a mechanical thing, or an electronic thing. most companies have redundancy built into their computer systems for example, and not to have it built into their human resources as well is shortsighted.
Mousehounde that is my point – there is no reason why a company should.
So companies don’t, and people who are sick, injured or disabled don’t get jobs. Which means people who have those conditions are condemned to a lifetime of poverty. Meanwhile, the work they are able to do does not happen because we can only contribute on an employer’s terms.
I totally agree with Maia’s article. I had been employed for over 20 years and was made redundant. I felt positive about the change in my life and was looking forward to a new direction. After three weeks of battling with WINZ (following a 10 week standown period) I am now on the sickness benefit and taking anti-depressants. My doctor has written on my form that WINZ must not contact me. I have been made to feel like scum of the earth by WINZ and will quite happily reclaim some of my taxes for now.
Re people with disabilities – employers often cut their noses off to spite their faces when turning down applicants with disabilities (based on their ignorance and stereotypes) as all people bring different skills to a workplace.
I have a friend who, by a combination of a medical condition on top of being pregnant has had to cut down her hours at work. On the one hand, she would have had to quit if she couldn’t cut down her hours. On the other hand, she’s working in an office and the other girl is having to pick up the slack of the hours she’s not working. I don’t think the other girl is getting paid more either. I love my friend, but this is not fair to the other girl if they would have hired another worker if my friend quit.
Asking employers to employ people who may have to take extra time off will, with any time sensative job, overload the other healthy workers. That’s not fair to them and I know I would be pissed if people expected me to take up the slack with no compensation or choice in the matter. Employers could hire temp workers, but they tend to be less skilled or less reliable or sick/injured/disabled as well. If they weren’t, well, why not hire them instead?
Now with work that’s a “so long as it gets done sometime” it would be okay since they could just pick up where they left off. But how many jobs like that are out there? I do think most employers could be more flexible on what hours people work as long as things get done efficiently but there are limits. You just can’t have your salespeople bailing in the middle of the Christmas sales rush.
Maia is correct that many employers are unwilling to hire the disabled, the pregnant, the sick, etc.
The reason for this is relatively simple. Laws controlling employment have made it difficult (and in some industries impossible) for employers to pay their workers on an output basis; that is, to pay them for what they do.
If I can pay you for what you do, then (within certain broad boundaries) I can hire you to do 100 units of production a week for me, or 600. If you need to cut your quota for three weeks to go into the hospital, that can be arranged. If you want to double your workload to earn some Christmas cash, that can be arranged. I may be reluctant to hire you because I hate pregnant people or something, but most likely I am not interested in your circumstances.
If I cannot pay you for what you do, but instead must pay you on the basis of the amount of time you spent allegedly working on my premises, or on the basis of you holding the position (whether you show up or do any work or not), then I am going to be extremely reluctant to hire you unless I know you’re at 100% and have a strong work ethic.
There are a lot of people who aren’t at 100%, or who don’t have much of a work ethic, who would nonetheless be eminently employable if their employers could pay them on the basis of economic output, rather than on criteria completely irrelevant to the value that the particular person is contributing to the firm. To the extent that employers are barred from behaving that way – and I suspect that in New Zealand, there are serious barriers in place – then the less-than-100% crowd are screwed. Liberalize your economic regulations, and improve the market outcome.
If we allow employers to pay the pregnant and disabled less because they allegedly do less work, then employers will use pregnancy and disability to pay people less regardless of whether they are produce less, at least they would here in the US. Get pregnant, then you get an automatic pay cut would be routine instead of illegal.
I certainly know able bodied men who are not at all productive, and yet they seem to keep their jobs year after year and they even get promotions. I know women who are amazingly productive and yet don’t get promotions or even decent wages. There are channels to reward productivity in existing workers, and yet employers don’t. Employers, in my experience, only reward a strong work ethic with more work and not with promotions or even decent wage increases.
Why would you think that they would suddenly start paying based on productivity? Or more amazingly be able to determine the productivity of a worker based on disability or health and then actually reward people based on how productive they are?
Giving employers the go ahead to pay the disabled just gives them a pass to discriminate more and does nothing to address the perception that the disabled are poor workers. There are disabilities that do not interfere with the ability to do certain jobs yet are quite visible and might put an employer off for reasons unrelated to ability. Nothing in my current job requires that I be able to walk. If I were left without that ability, my ability and prodcutivity (after the initial adjustment to that horrible event) should not suffer. I certainly would not want my employer to see that as an excuse to cut my salary.
Also, there are conditions which holding a job is really not an option. I don’t think we are doing anyone a favor by trying to pressure people with these conditons to get a job and acting like they are bad people for not trying to get a job they won’t be able to hold and may worsen their health. I do think as a society we should have a safety net that allows these people to live and contribute to society as best they can.