Disability and work seem to be two words that cannot stay together. This is proved by the discouraging data published periodically by institutional bodies and organisations supporting disabled people.
According to ISTAT, the Italian National Institute of Statistics, despite the fiscal and organisational advantages companies can benefit from, in Italy 66% of disabled people are out of the labour market and an increase in the number of fines imposed on companies for the non observance of law requirements has been observed.
In 2008, the administrative offences related to the non observance of the obligation to employ disabled workers were 275, in 2009 they were 2761, with a higher concentration in the central regions of the country (cf. the Fifth Report of the Parliament on the State of play in implementing the Law 68/99). Within the two-year period 2008-2009, a decrease in the number of disabled people employed, both through institutional agreements and private contracts, was observed. This was due to the economic crisis and the particular situation that characterised Northern Italy at that time. It must also be said that generally, in 2009, disabled people were employed through fixed-term contracts, while before, most of the times, they signed open-ended contracts, which give companies the possibility to benefit from tax relief.
Therefore, in spite of all the economic advantages offered by the law, it is still difficult for people suffering from disabilities to find a job, maybe because social and work integration is seen as something imposed by the law. Companies do not confer an added value to the inclusion in the working life of these people, who often want not to be slaves of the pure assistencialism.
An important aspect underlined by the Fifth Report of the Parliament concerns another obstacle to work integration and inclusion. In Italy, indeed, because of architectural barriers, 25.1% of job centres are not accessible by people suffering from physical disabilities. But there is also aspect to highlight, the presence of communication barriers regarding sensorial disabled people.
In Italy around 70’000 companies are obliged to respect the Law 68/99. These companies are both public and private and the half of them, with more than 50 employees, are required to hire a number of disabled people equal to 7% of the total staff.
An aspect in contrast with the general trend regards the type of recruitment made through job centres. There is a general increase, indeed, in roll-call recruitment and this means that those who respect the law pay much more attention to the integration of the individual, rather than to the pure respect of the law in such matter.
Last but not less important, it is interesting to notice that there is an increasingly higher number of foreigners in the registers for disabled people seeking work. In this case the non observance of legal requirements represents a double exclusion and discrimination.
Therefore, it would be interesting to understand the deep reasons for which entrepreneurs prefer paying fines instead of employing disabled people, whose recruitment is supported by fiscal relief and reimbursements. It is important to understand the reasons of the failure of these measures aiming at help disabled people go out from the circle of assistencialism and become citizens with their rights and obligations.
On the inside: