I'm way behind the time on this one. But the more I think about Philip Davies MP's
comments about disabled jobseekers the angrier it makes me.
The kind interpretation is to think that he meant it for the best, and genuinely believed that working for lower wages would allow people with barriers to standard employment to find suitable jobs. Even this interpretation is suspect. It leads to all sorts of wooly thinking with regards to how worthy people are. Do you get to charge 80% of the minimum wage if you were born without an arm, 75% if you're blind? Is the idea that you prove initially that you can do the work and then get to aspire to the dizzying heights of minimum wage work, or do you have to offer employers a perpetual discount on your substandard efforts?
It's pretty standard Conservative thinking: the state shouldn't be subsidising anything and something is only worth what you can convince industry to pay for it. And in this case it misses the point entirely.
First problem: Very few people are disabled in all aspects of life. Many may be limited in certain aspects of their ability, but that is of course true for everyone. How disabled do you have to be before you're encouraged to work for less on the grounds that you can never provide the value for money that able-bodied people do? Hell, I'm short-sighted, does that count? For the majority of people the answer is to find a job that plays to their strengths, not to charge less.
Second problem: If your aim is to get people off benefits and into work, then you need to remove barriers. The minimum wage is determined by cost of living, that's why it's set as it is. Disabled people, if anything, tend to have more expensive lives than the able. Getting them off benefits and forcing them to work as a second class slave race to pay for their home alterations is an abominable idea. It sickens me that he could even suggest such a thing without biting off his own tongue in shame. I can only hope for the sake of the country that we've merely elected someone who doesn't think things through before speaking, rather than a raging Nazi sociopath.
Essentially Mr Davies is trying, in his bumbling, poorly-thought-through way, to suggest that we should make life easier for employers who take on the challenges of working with disabled people. Trouble is, he's actually assuming in that irritating Tory way that the cost to the employer should be borne by the disabled individual (who presumably has the same millionaire friends as Mr Davies does to help out). So the suggestion is not that there should be tax benefits or grants available to employers to enable building work to make their premises more accessible or to purchase the required software or technology which makes their actual work more accessible. There's no suggestion that people with a disability be offered a free consultation with an expert who can assess their needs and skills and then liase with employers on their behalf to ensure their path into the workplace is smooth. And even though more flexible working benefits all -- less rush hour traffic, less cars on the roads, people are less stressed etc -- there's certainly no suggestion that moving away from the standard 9-5 business model be supported by the government in any way.
It's so annoying, even for me, when someone puts the needs of employers before the most vulnerable in society. I remember reading a comment from an employers representative a year or so ago on the topic of allowing more equal distribution of maternity/paternity leave: essentially he said that employers already discriminate against women of child bearing age in case they go on maternity leave, and that if the proposals were introduced logically employers would discriminate against everyone between 20 and 30, in case they had children. (Still comes close to the stupidest statement I've ever seen reported.)
Private companies are there to make money. It's good to have a strong economy, but there are other, more important things. Society is there to ensure some of the wealth goes to these other things. Like protecting children from abusers, providing healthcare to those who need it, and making sure that everyone has access to enough food and resources. Private companies ain't going to do that themselves, and it angers me when society's representatives, who ought to be holding them to account, instead roll over and simper that it's hard being an employer and here, flog the peasants some more.
You have value. You have value if you're blind, or if you're deaf. You have value if you find it hard to walk, or if you struggle to get through a working day. You have value if you are prone to depression, or were born with a missing limb, or if you're paraplegic. Everyone has something to contribute, and I wish to God that society was set up so that everyone could contribute what they can and be assured of getting what they need. I don't even care if we need to employ more bureaucrats -- with MY tax money -- to do it. Because let's face it, "bureaucrats" need to eat too.
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