The 2015 job agreement aimed at helping people with disabilities find work is due for revision. with the manifesto Not (un)limited enough At the initiative of the Start Foundation, civil society organizations are urging the government to broaden the definition of disabled people to help tens of thousands of extra people find work. Minister of Poverty Reduction Carola Schouten (CU) is discussing this with employers and will shortly inform the House of Representatives about amendments to the law.
To encourage employers to hire people with disabilities, it was agreed seven years ago that 100 thousand additional jobs for people with disabilities will be created in the corporate sector by 2026. Government organizations should have created 25,000 additional jobs for people with disabilities by that time, and they must adhere to an annual quota. If that target is not achieved, there may be a penalty scheme for employers who lag behind.
Target groups register
A so-called ‘target group register’ has been set up to determine who is considered to be occupationally disabled and who is not. Not all people with an occupational disability are registered here. Only hiring someone with a disability who is registered counts for an employer to comply with the agreement made.
According to the UWV, there are 245,000 people with a disability in the register, more than half of whom are currently employed. According to Statistics Netherlands, the labor force in 2017 counted a total of 660 thousand occupationally disabled people (there are no more recent figures).
The rules of the target group register have been set too strict, according to the manifesto of the civil society organizations presented on Wednesday. ‘For registration, it is checked whether you can earn a minimum wage independently or whether you are covered by a specific benefit scheme,’ says policy officer Daniël Toebes of Elkein, a network organization for people with disabilities. ‘People who have acquired a disability after the age of 18 or who have a disability with a higher education, are therefore often excluded from the scheme in practice.’
Expanding the target group register could be a way to help tens of thousands of unemployed people with disabilities find a job. ‘Sometimes two people are deaf for a moment, but one is included in the target group register and the other is not,’ says Nico Blok of Unlimited aan de Slag, an organization that organizes meetings between people with disabilities and employers. ‘They both need the same provision, but a person who has become deaf after the age of 18 finds a job less easily. That is inexplicable.’
Employers who hire people with an occupational disability want them to count towards the job agreement, Blok notes. “If they don’t,” he says, “sometimes they don’t even start the conversation.”
Mireille Frerejean (40):
‘As an adult I developed a progressive eye disease. I worked in education, but my eyes were getting so bad, a class full of teenagers couldn’t go anymore. I was rejected and sat at home. But I like to work. Nice that benefit, but I wanted to earn my own money.
‘I’ve sent 300 letters for a wide variety of jobs: from administrative positions to things involving social work. But every time I was asked for an interview, the first thing they wanted to know was if I was in the target group register. When I explained that I wasn’t eligible, they lost interest.
“I felt like I was being discriminated twice. You may be a risk, so the employer does not want you and there is a law that should help you, but you do not fall under that. It was disappointment upon disappointment. It dulled me. Fortunately, I am a bit stubborn on my own. After three years I hired a secondment agency for the visually impaired and they found me a job. I now work as a market researcher. It ensures that I speak to people every day again and because it is HBO level, I am also challenged again. I’m in again. Fortunately, after that long search, I found a needle in a haystack. But there are a few thousand others who, like me, would like to, but who are still on the sidelines. If they got a target group registration, it would be a lot easier for them.’
Chris de Boer (28):
“I won the wrong genetic lottery. I have two chronic illnesses: anemia and chronic intestinal inflammation. Due to my anemia I have had yellow skin all my life, but I function just fine. I just have a little less energy.
‘When I was 20 I got the intestinal infection. It felt like someone was constantly stabbing me in the stomach with a knife. At the peak, I had to go to the bathroom twenty times a day. It was grueling, both mentally and physically. Because of all the hospital visits and surgeries, it took me longer to complete my HBO study and I was never able to get a side job. In the end I got my diploma and had my colon removed. Now I am pain free.
‘I wanted to start working after that, but because of my illness I had a gap on my CV. My yellow skin color also didn’t help when applying for a job. I sent sixty letters, but I never got it. I could not be included in the target group register, because according to them I would find a job above the minimum wage with my HBO diploma. That was frustrating. I just needed the target group register for a boost.
‘I did not give up and sought help from a job coach. Six months later, I was suddenly able to enter the target group register. Once I got my spot, I only had to send one letter. Within a month I was working at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.’