20 April 2001
Chairperson,
Members of the Commission for Employment Equity Organised labour,
Organised business,
Representatives from various organisations of and for people with disabilities,
Representatives from the Office of Status of Disabled People in the Presidency and the various Provincial Disability Desks,
Ladies and gentlemen.
I welcome you to this launch of the draft Code of Good Practice on the Key Aspects of Disability in the Workplace. It gives me great pleasure to launch this Code today.
I believe that this Code can contribute significantly to improving opportunities for people with disability. It demonstrates Government commitment to help people with disabilities to secure jobs and enjoy satisfying careers at work.
The draft Code arises out of the Employment Equity Act which prohibits discrimination in employment on a range of grounds and promotes employment equity in respect of Africans, Coloureds, Indians women and people with disabilities.
Since the Act has been promulgated there have been many calls for clarity as to the definition of persons with disabilities and guidelines as to how to manage disability in the workplace to give effect to the Employment Equity Act.
It was for this reason that we have drafted this Code and I hope and trust that the document we are releasing today will provide guidance in this regard. It is a draft Code so that members of the public can give us feedback as to whether the Code is helpful as well as assisting us to enrich it.
It is aimed at helping prospective employees with disabilities to understand the rights and for employers to understand their obligations, to ensure that people with disabilities can enjoy and exercise their rights at work.
Redressing the legacy of disability discrimination
We have to acknowledge that in South Africa the employment rights of people with disabilities have been encroached upon so that they have been unable to take their rightful places in the world of work. This is even worse in the case in respect of black people and women.
Widespread ignorance, fear of the unknown, stereotypes and the negative perceptions against people with disabilities has led to people with disabilities being unfairly discriminated against in the society in general and in employment in particular. They therefore experience high unemployment levels, and remain in low status jobs and earn lower wages.
Unfair discrimination against disabled persons is perpetuated in many ways. There are unfounded assumptions about the abilities and performance of job applicants with disabilities. Advertising, interview arrangements and selection criteria could exclude or limit people with disabilities. Workplaces are inaccessible or lack of facilities and training processes are often inappropriate for people with disabilities.
The Code shows that it is possible to redress this legacy so that people with disabilities can enjoy and exercise their rights at work.
Employing disabled people: a benefit for employers and employees
The Code goes is premised on the view that employing disabled people is not only beneficial for society but for employers.
To illustrate this I would like to share with you the experiences of the British Department of Education and Employment who in 1996 introduced a Disability Discrimination Act which was followed by a similar Code of Good Practice.
In 1998, they published the results of a survey amongst companies that were employing disabled people. The survey found that the additional costs of employing disabled people were generally low, while the value to employers was high.
Some of the main survey findings were:
Alan Howarth, Equal Opportunities Minister, at the time said: "This report confirms what good employers have always known. Obtaining the best person for the job is essential in a modern, competitive workforce, and disabled people have an immense amount to offer."
I hope that I will be able to say the same thing in a couple of years time and that this Code will have made a contribution in assisting employers to gain value from disabled employers.
Main provisions of the Code
The Code cover the following aspects:
Let me look at some of these aspects
Defining people with disabilities The Employment Equity Act defines people with disabilities as "people who have a long term or recurring physical or mental impairment, which substantially limits their prospects of entry into, or advancement in, employment".
Some employers have asked: Are all people who wear spectacles disabled? What about somebody with diabetics? The Code seeks to provide guidelines to determine what kinds of conditions fall within the definition and which do not.
For example if somebody wears spectacles which corrects a visual impairment, then that person could not be regarded as somebody with a disability. However, if even with the wearing of spectacles, a person still is unable to see clearly, then that person could be regarded as having a disability.
The Code also sets out what are not disabilities such as substance abuse, compulsory gambling, self-imposed body adornments or normal deviations in height, weight and strength.
Reasonable accommodation The Code spells out how employers can and should assist disabled people so that they can perform their jobs as well as anyone without a disability. These measures are called in the Code and by people within the disability movement internationally as "reasonable accommodations".
Examples of reasonable accommodation include adapting facilities, changing training and assessment methods, adjusting working time, building ramps and providing readers.
These measures can reduce the impact of impairment and enhance the capacities of a person with a disability to fulfill his or her job. Employers are only required to implement measures which do not cause undue hardship. The draft Code also provides guidelines as to what is undue hardship.
I would caution employers against regarding all accommodations as 'undue hardship. This is certainly not the case and often investments in such measures can have positive productivity spin offs. The British report I referred to earlier demonstrated, and I quote: "That the requirement under the Disability Discrimination Act to make 'reasonable adjustments' for disabled people has clearly not resulted in any undue costs for employers, and they have reaped the benefit of the commitment and talent of their disabled employees."
Avoiding unfair discrimination and achieving employment equity from recruitment to termination
The draft Code looks at different aspects of the employment cycle and provides guidance as to how barriers to prevent the employment and advancement people with disabilities can be removed and how instead people with disabilities can be accommodated..
Areas covered include:
Confidentiality and disclosure of disability
The right to confidentiality is a fundamental human right which is guaranteed in the Constitution. Workers right of confidentiality is further protected in both the Labour Relations Act and Employment Equity Act.
However in both the Code of Good Practice on HIV/AIDS and this draft Code we have felt a need to provide further guidelines to employers and employees on how to ensure that this right is protected in practice.
Included in the guidelines are what to do when a person does not want to disclose his or her disability to an employer and what an employer should do when information on a person's disability needs to be disclosed to, for example, a manager.
Employee benefits
This section of the Code provides guidelines to ensure that benefit schemes do not unfairly discriminate against people with disabilities. It also provides some guidelines as to how benefit schemes can assist and reasonably accommodate people with disabilities.
Employment equity planning in respect of people with disabilities
Finally, the Code provides additional guidelines to employers and employees on how to incorporate disability issues when they are embarking upon the process of drafting an employment equity plan.
The Code as part of a broader programme to address the rights of people with disabilities
The Employment Equity Act and this Code is only one part of the response by our Government to ensure that people with disabilities take up their rightful place in the workplace and in society. Government as a whole has adopted a White Paper in respect of this area.
Within my own Department, the Skills Development Strategy also focuses on ensuring that people with disabilities receive training. We have targets as to the numbers of people with disabilities who need to receive training.
I was pleased to read in an independent survey on 'Employment Equity and Skills" done by Global Business Solutions in March 2001 that many employers are including people with disabilities in their planning around learnerships and skills programmes.
However, employment can't be looked at in isolation. Barriers to employment for disabled people appear in all areas of life. We need to strive to ensure that we take a holistic and strategic approach and ensure that other areas are also addressed such as accessible transport. The Employment Equity Act or the Code on its own will not achieve this goal.
In the same vein, the Code on its own can't achieve better employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The Code is only a set of guidelines. You are now being called upon to give us feedback on these guidelines but over and above this and in fact even while the Code is being finalised, there is a great task facing us to achieve our goal of disability equality.
For employers, there is the challenge of putting the guidelines into practice. Some of the proposals on paper look expensive or difficult to implement. Some of the proposals require changes to the way that you do things.
Many adaptations or accommodations are simple and can benefit all employers. And there are organisations to assist you. The disability movement, as you will witness in the exhibitions that are on display today, is ready and prepared to assist employers and employees.
These exhibitions are an eye-opener and show concretely that people with disabilities can be accommodated and if so, can grow in employment. Lack of support or a lack of information around the employment of people with disabilities can't be an excuse for failure to promote disability employment equity.
Way Forward
This is a draft Code. My Department would like to consult as widely as possible on this Code. We therefore invite all of you, but especially organisations representing people with disabilities to participate in this policy-making process through submitting comments.
Furthermore, the Commission for Employment Equity will hold public hearings in all provinces. They will start on the 9th of May in Johannesburg, East London and Cape Town and followed by hearings in Bloemfontein, Mafikeng and Kimberley on the 16th of May. Lastly, hearings will be held in Pietersburg, Witbank and Durban, on the 23rd of May.
I hope that your provincial stakeholders will take this opportunity to make representations during these public hearings to assist us in finalising this Code. All the comments will be submitted to the Commission for Employment Equity who will advise me on the contents of the Code to be promulgated.
Finally, I would like to thank all those that made the Code and this launch possible. They include the various people that contributed to the drafting of this Code including IDEA Consortium, USAID for funding the drafting processes and the staff of the Directorate: Employment Equity.
I thank you.