Blind Citizens
Senator
Troeth
Chair, Senate Employment, Workplace
Relations
and Education Committee
Department of the Senate
Parliament
House
Dear
Senator Troeth,
Re: Inquiry
into the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005
Blind
Citizens Australia (BCA) is the National peak advocacy organisation of people
who are blind or vision impaired. Our mission is to achieve equity and equality
by our empowerment, by promoting positive community attitudes and by striving
for high quality and accessible services which meet our needs.
We thank
the Committee for providing the opportunity to make a submission to this
Inquiry.
Our key concerns with the Work Choices Bill outlined
in this submission include:
-
The short timeframe to respond to
the Bill;
-
the potential for a reduction in
wages for blind people;
-
the inadequacy of protection for
blind people in relation to negotiation of terms and conditions of employment
and employment tenure, and;
-
the negative impact of reducing
minimum working conditions.
Regards,
Robert Altamore
President
Blind Citizens
Table of Contents
·
Blind Citizens Australia: Response
to the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005
Equal pay for people who are blind
or vision impaired and the Work Choices Bill
Structural
Barriers to Employment and Work Place negotiations
Reduction
in Minimum Working Conditions
Blind Citizens Australia considers the time frame made
available to respond to the Work Choices Bill to be inappropriately short and
unfair to the community in general and people who are blind and vision impaired
in particular. The volume and complexity of the Bill and its publication in
formats inaccessible to people who are blind or vision impaired means that our
submission is necessarily brief.
We are concerned that the Bill proceeds on the
assumption that the barrier to the employment of people who are blind and
vision impaired are the wages they receive for their work. The experience of
our members, as both employers and employees, clearly suggests that this assumption
is incorrect. The very real barriers impeding people who are blind and vision
impaired from gaining employment and staying employed are the discriminatory
attitudes of others and environmental issues such as access to information.
BCA has never, in the organisations 30 year history of
advocacy and research, considered wages to be a barrier to employment for
people who are blind or vision impaired. Blind Citizens Australia asserts,
without compromise, that people who are blind or vision impaired should be paid
wages at a rate of equal work for equal value.
We are concerned that people who are blind or vision
impaired, whose employment comes within the application of the wage setting
parameters in the Bill, will have their wages and income decreased in real
terms. The language of cl.7J (11) and cl.90P of the Bill will enable the
application of alternative disability wage setting mechanisms to employees, not
on the basis of their disability, but on the basis that they lack the
bargaining power to resist an employer’s attempt to use the Fair Pay Commission
processes to lower the wages of their workers.
We call upon the Committee to recommend that the Work
Choices Bill be amended to remove all provisions that have the potential to
allow the proposed Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC)
to set separate pay scales for people with disabilities that will result in
people who are blind or vision impaired receiving comparative reduced wages for
their work.
In place of these provisions, standards of equal pay
must be introduced to ensure people who are blind or vision impaired are not
further discriminated in the work place.
Our major concern with this Bill is that it focuses on the wages paid to
employees as the barrier to their employment and does nothing to address the
social and economic and attitudinal barriers that prevent people who are blind
or vision impaired getting and keeping jobs. These structural barriers include
information access, access to adaptive technology, access to education, work
experience and career development and access to transport and the built
environment. These access barriers are not only relevant to gaining and keeping
a job but those barriers relating to information access, adaptive technology
and attitudes are particularly relevant in so far as they disadvantage people
who are blind and vision impaired in defending themselves in the brave new
world of individualized workplace relations.
Structural Barrier - Information
Access
Work Choices Booklet: To date, Blind Citizens Australia
has been required to lobby the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations
(DEWR) to have the Work Choices booklet made
available in alternative formats (braille, large print and audio) for people
who are blind or vision impaired. The failure of DEWR
to make this important booklet available in alternative formats is a clear
breach of the Commonwealth Disability Strategy (CDS). We were informed by
members of our organization that their initial requests for the booklet in
alternative formats were met with dismissive remarks by the call centre staff
including “get someone to read the booklet to you”.
Guide to the Employment Advocate: Similar to
the situation with the Work Choices booklet outlined above, we are still in the
process with DEWR to have the ‘Guide to the
Employment Advocate’ booklet made available in alternative formats.
The Bill,
as presently drafted, does not address these information access barriers with
respect to agreement making on terms and conditions of employment.
Australian Workplace Agreement
(AWA): AWA’s for
people who are blind or vision impaired must be made available in alternative
formats including braille, audio and large print. To take account of the format
conversion, the time taken to respond to the AWA for people who are blind or
vision impaired must also be correspondingly extended from the current time
made available.
Structural
Barrier - Access to Adaptive Technology
Improving access to adaptive technology will
assist blind people to gain and keep jobs. However, this technology is very
costly and out of reach for many blind people. Although the Commonwealth
Government provides compensatory incentives for employers to adapt their
workplaces to accommodate people with disabilities such as the Workplace
Modifications Scheme, these programs are under used by employers.
Structural
Barrier - Education
Braille is
the primary form of literacy for people who are blind. It is of great concern
to Blind Citizens Australia that instruction in braille is not available to all
children who need it and that the literacy needs of adults who have become
blind are not recognized in Commonwealth literacy and numeracy programs.
Obstacles
such as inaccessible materials have resulted in a large majority of those who
are blind or vision impaired that have undertaken tertiary study not benefiting
from their post-secondary education and training.
Structural
Barrier - Job Retention....Losing vision in adult life
The issues
surrounding job retention for people with disabilities are highly complex;
employees must be encouraged to identify their needs, employers must understand
their obligations to employees with disabilities and the assistance provided
must be effective.
Early
recognition is vital. Delays in disclosure can occur for many interrelated
reasons including the employee’s unwillingness to acknowledge the deterioration
in their condition, a work culture that does not support employees disclosing
their needs, or a concern (too often justified) that if they do disclose they
will be dismissed or marginalised.
Employers who are unaware of or ignore their responsibility to assist employees
with disabilities exacerbate this situation. Such individualised circumstances
require individualised solutions. Government support programs such as the
Workplace Modifications must be made more flexible and adapt to the particular
circumstances faced by people who are blind or vision impaired.
Example: Richard noticed deterioration in
his sight. He found it increasingly difficult to do his work which involved
considerable amounts of reading and computer use. Out of fear he would be
dismissed, Richard did not disclose his failing sight and asked friends to take
care so his employer would know about his sight problems. Eventually, the
employer discovered Richard’s failing eyesight and Richard was made redundant
for operational reasons.
Research by
Blind Citizens Australia has reinforced how difficult it is for people who have
lost their sight to retain their jobs or re-enter the work force if they have
lost their jobs due to sight loss. Rather than retrain staff who are
experiencing sight loss, and hold on to the knowledge and experience of the
worker, employers are making short-term decisions by making the worker
redundant, as if they have nothing else to offer.
Structural
Barrier – Workplace Discrimination
In addition
to these structural barriers, people who are blind or vision impaired come up
against discriminatory attitudes in the workplace every day. Workplace
discrimination has a profound impact on an individual’s self esteem.
We are
concerned that a number of dismissal related changes in the Bill that are
likely to disproportionately disadvantage people who are blind and vision
impaired. In particular, as seen from the example of Richard cited above, we are concerned that employers will use ‘operational
requirements’ as a catch all reason for dismissal which may lead to a sharp
increase in the dismissal rates of people who are blind or vision impaired,
particularly those who acquire their impairment while in the workforce. Our
example of Richard shows the clear need
for enhanced protections for vulnerable employees against the misuse of this
new employer power.
We want to point
out that the reduction in minimum working conditions will disproportionately
disadvantage people who are blind or vision impaired because they exclude many
of the flexible arrangements which assist blind people to obtain and maintain
their employment. This point is particularly pertinent for people who are blind
or vision impaired who have family or care responsibilities and people who are
dependant on public transport.
People who
are blind or vision impaired face numerous structural barriers to employment. Our
experiences with the Work Choices policy measures so far, especially with regards
to information access, demonstrate that these barriers are simply being
reinforced with the government’s workplace reforms. Far from creating
opportunities for people who are blind or vision impaired, the provisions of
the Work Choices Bill are again simply adding weight to the barrier of
discrimination through granting legislative permission to the AFPC to create regimes of unequal pay for people who are
blind or vision impaired and other people with disabilities.
We call on
the government to amend the Work Choices Bill to:
·
Remove
the possibility of further discrimination so the legislation supports the aspirations
of people who are blind and vision impaired to be employed and retain
employment;
·
recognize
the barriers faced by employees who are blind and vision impaired in
negotiating terms and conditions of employment and;
·
provide
adequate protections against the erosion of wages and conditions for employees,
particularly those who are most vulnerable to exploitation.