Austerity hits disabled workers' job prospects

There is a large employment gap to the tune of 30% between the proportion of disabled people in work and the proportion on non-disabled, according to a TUC briefing published last month.

The briefing gives the key facts that can help unions to challenge the government spin and media lies and suggest ways in which unions can work with disabled people to promote an alternative.

Trade unions and disabled people fighting austerity said the disabled/non-disabled gap was getting progressively smaller between 1998 and 2008, but the recession put a stop to that.

The coalition government’s cuts have meant large-scale job losses on the public sector, which has a higher proportion of disabled people, so the outlook is far from rosy.

As it is, among disabled people with jobs, they are much more likely to work part-time and be in lower-paid jobs than non-disabled people.

The option of supported employment has all but disappeared for thousands of severely disabled people, particularly with the closure of the Remploy factories. As of last October, at least two in five (44%) of the 1,800 workers made redundant were unemployed and around a quarter (26%) had disappeared off the employment radar.

www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/DisabledPeopleFightingAusterity.pdf