Hi Matthias,
I recently completed some research in this area with international colleagues. We were looking at the effectiveness or otherwise of intiaitves aimed at imprving the labour market participation of peopel with disabilites and chronic illnesses. As part of this work, we did look for evaluations of the employment effects of anti-discrimination legislation across the five study countries (Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK). All five have some form of legislation aimed at preventing discrimination against people with disabilities and chronic illnesses in the recruitment process and within the workplace. These pieces of legislation also place duties on employers to make workplace adjustments ("reasonable adjustments" in the case of the UK's Disability Discrimination Act). We could only locate studies evaluating the employment effects of the UK legislation. There is, however, a substantial literature, including evaluation work, on the Americans with Disabilities Act, which you might be interested in.
As Larry has already pointed out, the DDA replaced the largely ineffective 1944 Employment Act. He also points to one of the central weaknesses of the DDA, that the disabled person themselves has to prove that they have been discriminated against in employment or in the recruitment process because they were disabled. What this also entails is having to prove that your are disabled under the terms of the Act, which can and often is challenged by the employers' legal representatives. The defintion is also quite narrow and reflects a medical rather than social model of disability.
In terms of the employment effects of the Act, we identified four studies that used national population survey) data before and after the implementation of the DDA in 1996. None found an improvement in employment rates at the population level for people self reporting disability or limiting long standing illness. There was some evidence that the employment situation had worsened following the introduction of the Act for some groups with disabilities, in particular women, those with lower skills and those with mental health conditions. As all four of these were observational studies it isn't really possible to attribute the observed worsening of employment for disabled people to the operation of the DDA. It should, however, be borne in mind that there was an improvement in the overall level of employment for much of the period covered by these studies.
We also identified four key studies examining the awareness of employers of the DDA and their attitude towards its implementation (these are freely available on the website of the UK Department for Work and Pensions - http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/report_subjects/subjects.asp#peopleDisabled). About three-quarters of employers were aware that there was legislation covering disability discrimination, although less than one-quarter were aware of the Act itself. Awareness levels were higher amongst larger employers, public sector and voluntary organisations and those already employing disabled people. The studies also reported very low levels of awareness of the Act’s main provision - making reasonable adjustments for disabled employees - and considerable uncertainty as to what is meant by the term disabled. Only one third of employers who had made reasonable adjustments indicated that such adjustments were made in response to the Act. There were clear contradictions in attitudes towards employing people with disabilities. The majority of employers stated that their workplaces had equal opportunities, but at the same time around half stated that it would be difficult to recruit or retain an employee with disabilities due to workplace practices.
As the work I am referring to here was a systematic review, we had quite tight inclusion criteria that excluded a number of very good studies that explored the attitudes and practices of employers across a range of sectors of the employment market and which overall indicate that discrimination, particularly in recruitment practices remains a major barrier to disabled people's access to employment. I hope to produce something in the near(ish) future summarising this body of work. The work I have referred to above is currently under submission to a journal and we hope it will be out next year.
From the work we've done, it seems to me that a set of policies are required, one of which is anti-discrimination legislation, suitably drafted. But this needs to be part of a package of policies aimed at improving the employment position of people with disabilites and chronic illnesses. These need to include (but not be limited to) employer incentives, such as wage subsidies, of a sufficiently generous and long-term nature to actually work as an incentive; schemes that provide funding for making workplace adjustments and provide employment supports for disabled employees also need to be adequately funded and well advertised, and need to focus as much on adjusting work practices as the physical accessibility of work; disability awareness schemes for both employers and other employees; and, well funded welfare supports for disabled workers that enable and support flexible work and don't financial punish people who move in and out of the labour market. These types of polciies also require effective evaluation and monitoring, particularly in terms of who is or is not able to access them (we produced a paper looking at this in the case of Sweden - http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09638288.2010.493596).
Given the current financial state that many Western countries are in, it is highly unlikely that a package of well-funded policies aimed at improving the employment chances of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses will be put into place anytime soon.
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