I'm tired of being treated poorly and I'm tired of seeing others getting treated poorly, so I hope this information can help some of my fellow workers out there.
This will focus on two particularly vulnerable groups: Disabled workers and Transgender workers.
Let's look at some statistics.
I'll use myself as an individual case study for you, as well.
Worker's rights resources will be linked at the end.
—
Disabled Workers
The Office for National Statistics published “Outcomes for disabled people in the UK: 2021“, containing the following information:
Between July and September 2021, 53.5% of disabled people aged 16 to 64 years in the UK were employed compared with 81.6% of non-disabled people.
Across all age groups, the employment rate was lower for disabled than non-disabled people…
Around half of disabled people aged 16 to 64 years (53.5%) in the UK were in employment compared with around 8 in 10 (81.6%) for non-disabled people (July to September 2021); disabled people with severe or specific learning difficulties, autism and mental illness had the lowest employment rates.
The Labour Force Survey data set “Labour market status of disabled people” was used as part of the above statistical analysis, and is updated more frequently.
The numbers are grim, and although the UK is far from the worst country for disability support in the world, discrimination is still common.
Low Key Discrimination is Still Discrimination
Discrimination is often extremely subtle, or never explicitly stated even if it is otherwise highly likely or apparent that discrimination is playing a factor in an interaction, situation, or hiring process– Making it extremely difficult for disabled workers to get any help.
Famously, you can go on LinkedIn or any other jobs site right now, and count how many seated desk office jobs note that they require a driver's license (not possible for many disabled people), how many require “the ability to lift X amount” as a physical requirement for a non-physically active role, and so on.
These are designed to weed out disabled applicants.
Common interview practices, such as monitoring body language or eye contact, are directly discriminatory against neurodiverse people or those with ADHD, cerebral palsy, or other conditions where movement/body language and eye contact may not be possible.
So in many cases, the discrimination begins long before anyone is even hired– A large part of why there is such a discrepancy in employment rates between disabled people and abled people.
It also often takes us disabled people far longer to find a new job compared to abled people, due to employer hesitancy or discriminatory hiring practices. So we are often left between jobs for weeks to months on end, and knowing this often leads to many disabled workers remaining in awful or even harmful jobs, purely to avoid the threat of extended financial strain from being unemployed.
While it is obviously best to look for a new job while you're still employed, disabled workers are often overworked or not given appropriate accommodations, meaning many of us are left unable to do anything but go immediately to sleep after work, leaving no time, energy, or ability for us to do any job searching while currently employed. So this is almost never a possibility.
—
Access to Work: Disability Aid Services as Operated by Ferengi
While there are services like Access to Work which are designed, theoretically, to help disabled people get what is needed to enter or remain in the workforce, in my personal experience, it is so incredibly difficult (and often traumatic) to go through this process that many are deterred or have been hurt to the degree that they stop trying to get help.
The Disability Tax, AKA Some of Us Have to Pay to Hear
I need hearing aids. They cost too much for me to afford– Nearly £3000. I was advised by my audiologist to apply for Access to Work.
Before you ask, no, the NHS does not provide the type of hearing aids I need.
The NHS provides only certain models and types of hearing aids.
While those certain specific types of hearing aids are indeed free through the NHS, that does not cover conditions like mine, and the NHS does not provide the hearing devices I require. This is why my audiologist told me to go through Access to Work to get what I need.
The NHS does not provide everything for everyone, although it could if politicians would stop screwing around.
So no, I could not have just “gone through the NHS”. That is not an option for a lot of things that a lot of disabled people need. Famously, most types of wheelchairs also fall into this category, same as my hearing aids.
The additional costs associated with being disabled are referred to as the Disability Tax.
In my case, my hearing aids are necessary for me to be able to hear, especially for interpreting speech or having any degree of directional hearing at all.
However, this is a major expense that abled people are not required to have.
This is one of many ways in which capitalism fucks over disabled people. But employers make it even worse.
My shitty employer at the time offered no help, and quite possibly illegally had me classed as “self-employed”; If I knew then what I know now I would have contacted HMRC/Citizens Advice over this, but I was so exhausted from work that I didn't have any mental energy or ability left at the end of a day to figure this out.
I genuinely didn't realise this was even a thing, because nobody tells disabled people what to look out for in the workplace, and finding out on our own which is often the only remaining option then takes energy, time, and ability that we don't have– it's worth noting that a lot of disabled people genuinely cannot navigate this shit, including me.
But Access to Work can essentially only help as much as someone's employer allows them to. And if someone is classed as self-employed, you're pretty much fucked.
Not that Access to Work was any kind of great experience for me (and apparently many others as well):
Ableist Disability System Makes Hearing Disabled Person Attend Phone Assessments
So, Access to Work. Sounds like an amazing system, and I'm sure that for someone, it probably was at some point.
All I can vouch for is my personal experience. Have fun with this shit:
I kept asking Access to Work to advise me on my employment status as I was confused and highly stressed, and informed them I was unable to determine my status and would need assistance to do so.
They told me to ask my employer, my employer was not helpful. I made it clear to Access to Work I wasn't getting a lot of help from my employer on this, and all they did was keep asking me for the information I was struggling to obtain or verify.
Nobody provided any clear answers or support– In fact, they only kept asking me the same questions I was asking them. It was ridiculous.
But here's the most amazing part, and one example of why disability support services in the UK are widely considered to be systematically ableist:
They kept calling me and insisted on only assessing me over the phone. I am hard of hearing. They were very well aware of this from the beginning onward. Still kept calling, though.
To make this clear: I am disabled and was seeking help to get hearing aids so that I could work. They were well aware of my disability and hearing problems, and insisted on only speaking to me verbally via phone. No video calls or emails. Only phone. I could not hear them.
It might be obvious to you all that forcing a hearing disabled person who does not currently have any hearing aids to have an audio-only assessment in order to possibly obtain the needed hearing aids may present some obvious problems.
Spoiler: They didn't care.
Note that under the Equality Act 2010, linked at the end of this post, I am legally entitled to reasonable accommodations. Emailing me instead of calling me is considered a reasonable accommodation in a situation such as this.
Access to Work is a government operated service. I am nearly 100% sure that they broke their own law by refusing to communicate with me via email.
I told them it was extremely difficult for me to do an audio only assessment, and they kept insisting on continuing with multiple phone assessments, even after I made it clear repeatedly that I could not hear them well enough to effectively continue with over the phone only conversations.
I was told repeatedly that they were unable to carry out assessments via email, that this could not be done, and was not an option.
At one point, someone agreed to email me, but then never did. When I emailed them, they called me back. Incredible.
They repeatedly refused to contact me via email even though this is absolutely an option, right up until I took the time and sent them a PDF copy of the Equality Act 2010 legislation with each and every line that applied to me highlighted and annotated.
My Access to Work contact then “went on vacation” all of a sudden, and I received another case assessor. Who immediately started telling me the same shit.
But only after I emailed a hidden contact email, which I was only able to obtain after asking other disabled people on Twitter to see if anyone had run into this issue as well, did anything start to change.
It turns out the answer was overwhelmingly yes, pretty much everyone has had issues with Access to Work, and they purposefully do not list certain information or email contacts until a certain point in the process; Someone was kind enough to give me an email for a higher up person at Access to Work, and after I contacted them, the second assessor was then willing to communicate with me via writing.
I assume their boss emailed them after they all realised I quoted the Equality Act back at them, which they were then legally unable to refute.
Suddenly, they were happy to speak with me via email– After several weeks/months of refusing to do so.
Because my shitty employer was shitty, I ultimately still had to pay nearly £2000 for my hearing aids. The Disability Tax, once again, is an unfair financial burden on disabled people.
The Access to Work support would only cover a portion of it, and in retrospect this is probably because 1) the initial phone-only fuckery, 2) because I was considered “self-employed” at that time, and I was unable to figure out that this was probably incorrect and nobody I was asking for help in order to figure this out was helping me at all, and 3) if you are self-employed, you are fucked.
Oh, let's check those ONS statistics again:
When looking at type of employment, there were more disabled people who were self-employed (13.8%) than non-disabled people (12.5%). These trends are consistent with 2020.
Maybe that is part of the reason why self-employed workers don't seem to be eligible for as much disability support. But I also admit, I am bitter.
Now, of course, I'm still glad I got some degree of financial support. I am mindful of disabled workers in other countries who have it even worse.
But it should not have taken roughly six months, they should not have forced phone call assessments with a hearing disabled person, and every time I reached out for help in figuring out the relevant and key details, I was given non-answers or just asked my own questions right back at me.
Ultimately, the cost of obtaining the hearing devices I need was still hefty, although the financial aid I was eventually able to receive did help significantly. It was still a significant amount of money out of pocket for me, which was difficult.
And that is the type of “help” that is available to disabled workers.
I'm not looking forward to figuring out how to add this shit to my next set of taxes, because that's a whole other thing that I am unable to do by myself, yet I am forced to do it by myself, so I am basically working on taxes year-round because that's how long it takes me to figure things out. I'm not joking.
But, here's my point in sharing all that:
There is no effective disability support for anything in regards to work or employment for the vast majority of disabled people.
Granted, this is just my experience, but the statistics don't lie; Even when we are able to get a job at all, we often struggle to navigate all of the related complex systems (disability support, tax systems, worker's rights legislation, etc.) due to a lack of adequate support– Or lack of any effective support at all.
I cannot possibly explain to you the stress and difficulty of being a disabled worker.
To all my fellow disabled workers: I'm sorry we have it so hard.
We desperately need abled workers to stand up for our rights as workers, as well. Even just our rights as people, in general.
Disabled workers are suffering and struggling just as much and often even moreso than abled workers.
Even in systems like in the UK where there are theoretically support options for disabled workers, I hope that using myself as an example and providing the above statistics helps to shed some light on how difficult and hostile the process of seeking help is for disabled people in the workforce.
I'm not even going to get started on fucking PIP (Person Independence Payments) for those of us who are unable to work or can no longer work, but briefly, the Disability News Service states:
About 1,600 working-age disabled people are dying every year after having their claim for disability benefits rejected…
The Department for Work and Pensions figures (DWP) reveal that 7,990 disabled people who lodged a claim for person independence payment (PIP) in the five years after the new benefit was launched in April 2013 had died within six months of registering their claim, while also having that claim rejected.
Another set of figures released by DWP shows that 3,680 disabled people – or more than 60 a month – died within three months of their initial PIP applications being rejected by DWP.
It's grim. If we can't work, or can't get the help we need to work, or if our jobs contribute to a worsening of our health, and we end up needed to seek benefits– The process of trying to get approved for any disability benefits is brutal and nearly impossible for most who are in the most need, and as you can see above, even those who are in the most need are often denied anyway.
Only to die soon after being denied.
Be aware of what your fellow workers are dealing with. It's grim.
Even where services, support, or legislation exists, none of that has any impact on the reality of how disabled workers are actually treated.
If you are disabled, know your rights; Info is available at the bottom of this post.
—
Transgender Workers
According to Crossland Employment Solicitors:
Our shocking new report reveals a strong prejudice among UK employers towards transgender workers with 1 in 3 employers admitting they are ‘less likely’ to hire a transgender person and nearly half (43%) unsure if they would recruit a transgender worker.
…we also found that a staggering 74% of employers have never knowingly worked with a transgender person – implying that most transgender workers do not reveal their true gender identity for fear of condemnation.
Over three-quarters (77%) of employers polled were wrong when asked which transgender characteristics are protected against discrimination.
A third of all employers polled thought that all transgender workers are legally protected against discrimination – despite an equal number admitting that they would discriminate against transgender workers by not hiring them – and a staggering 59% are against the law extending to protect all types of transgender people from discrimination such as non-binary people. Only 9% believe the law needs to change.
Stonewall UK provides some relevant information here as well:
…an astonishing 35 per cent of LGBT people at work have hidden their identity in the last year because they were afraid of discrimination; a figure that rises to 42 per cent for black, Asian and minority ethnic LGBT staff and 51 per cent for trans staff.
Almost one in five (18 per cent) have been the target of negative comments or conduct from work colleagues in the last year because they are LGBT. Nearly one in five LGBT people (18 per cent) who were looking for work reported that they were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
The situation is particularly bad for LGBT staff who are black, Asian or minority ethnic, trans or disabled, who were all found to be more likely to experience harassment and abuse in the workplace. Shockingly, one in ten black, Asian and minority ethnic LGBT employees (10 per cent) have been physically attacked by customers or colleagues in the last year, compared to three per cent of white people.
Nearly one in four trans people (24 per cent) said they did not get a promotion they were up for at work because they were trans, compared to seven per cent of lesbian, gay and bi people who aren’t trans. Meanwhile, almost one in four LGBT disabled people (24 per cent) say they were excluded by colleagues in the last year.
The above is based on the LGBT in Britain Work Report.
The National LGBTQ Task Force is a USA based group, more on them in the section below, but they are still worth looking at for statistical information as the UK does not keep nearly as many statistics on LGBTQIA+ workforce matters.
The following is copied from “TRANSGENDER WORKERS AT GREATER RISK FOR UNEMPLOYMENT AND POVERTY“:
Transgender workers report unemployment at twice the rate of the population as a whole (14% vs. 7% at the time the workers were surveyed).
More than four in 10 transgender people (44%) who are currently working are underemployed.
Transgender workers are nearly four times more likely than the population as a whole to have a household income of under $10,000 (15% vs. 4% at the time the workers were surveyed).
…transgender workers face higher rates of unemployment and are at greater risk of poverty.
Back to UK specific sources, People Management has found:
According to a YouGov survey of 410 trans employees across the UK… two-thirds (65 per cent) said they have had to hide their trans status at work, compared to half (52 per cent) five years ago – a 13 percentage point rise since TotalJobs started carrying out this survey in 2016.
The poll also found that a third (32 per cent) had experienced discrimination in the workplace in the last five years, and more than two in five (43 per cent) had quit because their work environment was unwelcoming – an increase of 7 percentage points since 2016.
One in five trans employees (20 per cent) said they had experienced fewer microaggressions since working from home during the pandemic.
It's a grim situation for trans workers.
And again, cis workers need to understand just how bad it is, and start really stepping up and defending trans co-workers and fellow trans workers in general.
People who are at severe systemic disadvantage owing to discrimination are even less capable of workplace bargaining, risking the organisation of any strikes or other actions, and are often less able to obtain help or accurate information regarding workplace rights.
—
Intersectional Discrimination: Disabled Transgender Workers
The National LGBTQ Task Force is a USA based organisation, however since to my knowledge the UK does not keep any statistics on transgender workers, this is the only available information I could find to work with.
According to the LGBT People With Disabilities Report:
2 in 5 transgender people are disabled.
This discrimination compounded by the discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as racial and ethnic discrimination, means that LGBT people with disabilities may struggle to find and keep jobs, and to access support services like unemployment benefits, leaving them and their families economically insecure.
Needless to say, intersectional factors of discrimination always need to be taken into consideration as well.
The more ways in which a person can be discriminated against, the harder it is for us to defend ourselves or even get reliably informed as to what our rights are.
Workers who are not subject to as many discriminatory factors, or those who may not be subject to any of the most common discriminatory factors, need to pay attention to how those of us who are seen as “lesser” are being treated.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
I hope this was interesting, informative, or helpful for someone out there.
—
Rights For Reference:
UK Legislation – Equality Act 2010 – Full Text PDF
ACAS – Disability Discrimination at Work
Citizens Advice – What Counts as Disability Discrimination
Disability Justice Project – Your Rights At Work
Government Equalities Office – Recruiting and retaining transgender staff: a guide for employers
HR-24 – Transgender Employees Experiences and a Guide for Employers
ACAS – Supporting trans employees in the workplace
People Management – Understanding transgender rights at work