Joe is in his thirties and has been working at the same job for the past 10 years. Like most people, he goes in each day at nine, gets an hour for lunch and finishes at about five, writes Mary Raftery
The job isn't great, mainly packing various goods, boring and repetitive, but Joe figures that at least he has work. Most of his friends are not so lucky. Joe gets paid €25 for his 40-hour week. He has no rights, cannot join a union and can be disciplined or fired at will. He cannot appeal.
Joe is terrified to talk about his work conditions, convinced he will lose his job. Needless to say, Joe is not his real name. You might think that Joe exists in an impoverished Third World economy, or perhaps that I am describing work conditions of 100 years ago. But no, Joe lives and works in Dublin today. He is one of the thousands employed in sheltered workshops all over the country. Joe has a disability which means he has difficulty controlling his physical movements.
Whether Joe works or not, he gets a social welfare disability allowance, which is about a quarter of the national minimum wage. His actual "wage" of €25 a week is the most his employer says he can afford to pay.
There is good news and bad news on the horizon for Joe. The good news is that work has been completed within the Department of Health to develop a code of practice which may give Joe some rights and decent pay. The bad news is that the Department has made no public announcement, so Joe and his fellow workers know nothing about it.
I managed recently to get my hands on a copy of this draft code of practice. Its proposals are revolutionary. Those in sheltered employment who are clearly working (as opposed to daycare or therapeutic activity) will be given the legal status and full rights of employees, together with an entitlement to the minimum wage.
Estimates vary as to how many people may be affected by this, but out of the 8,000 or so currently in sheltered employment in Ireland, about a third are now in what is considered a standard employee relationship to their employers.
It is quite startling to talk to those familiar with this shadowy area of economic activity. "A kind of organised indentured servant structure," was one description of conditions. "Bordering on slavery," was how another expert described the workshops. "Quite a number of multinational companies exploit this area, getting menial work done on the cheap and then claim that they're doing their bit for disabled people," he added.
It is important, however, to note here that there are some exceptions to this, where the workshops are well run and the workers are respected and better paid. However, in the main, thousands of workers with disabilities have for decades been disgracefully treated by a badly funded system privately run by so-called charitable organisations.
People are expected to be grateful that they are being provided with what is euphemistically called organised activity or training, but is often in reality ordinary work. The idea that these workers should enjoy the standard employment rights applicable to the rest of society has simply not been part of the thinking around disability to date.
The new code of practice (if it ever sees the light of day) will shake this area to its core. Much space is devoted to the definition of work and of an employee. It separates out daycare and therapeutic activity (which it says should continue to be funded by the Department of Health) from standard employment operations (which should now be transferred for funding and business support to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment).
Full rights and pay should be accorded to anyone working in these latter operations, and the code lists these rights in detail.
The code has been in preparation since 2000, when the ICTU insisted on its inclusion as a provision of that year's national wage agreement, the PPF. A working group was established and the draft code was delivered to the Department of Health in December 2002.
When you ask the Department of Health, as I did, why the secrecy and delay, they'll tell you that it's all really up to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. This Department, when asked, didn't seem to know much about the area, saying it was a matter either for Health or for FÁS if it involved training. Anyway, they say, they have no money for it in the Estimates.
Issues also arise with the Department of Social and Family Affairs over whether people with disabilities can work, earn a proper living, and still keep their medical cards and other disability-related benefits.
Meanwhile, four years after a commitment to have a proper code of practice, Joe still goes to work every day, still earns a pittance and is still terrified to complain in case he gets fired. Thousands like him are falling between the cracks as Government Departments try to blame each other for the indefensible delay in ending this exploitation.