Disabled Workers: Damned If We Do, Damned If We Don't

Another day, another class-baiting insult from the Conservative government. There's not 24 hours goes by without the Tories stirring up hatred towards some disadvantaged group, but don't worry: this will all be over by Wednesday when the government implodes, according to Jean-Claude Juncker. But it's too early to celebrate — there's no guarantee on what the replacement will be like, and the potential candidates are like choosing between a hyena, a shark, and a colony of vultures. But let's focus on the present, while we still have a semi-functioning government.

Philip Hammond made some condescending and discriminatory statements about the disabled (it's always us, except when it's the feckless poor. If you're poor and disabled, you're really screwed). He said:

"It is almost certainly the case that by increasing participation in the workforce, including far higher levels of participation by marginal groups and very high levels of engagement in the workforce, for example of disabled people — something we should be extremely proud of — may have had an impact on overall productivity measurements."

There are so many things wrong with this statement that I don't know where to begin. But there's also a grain of truth in what he said (this is the only time I've ever agreed with Hammond on anything, so savour the moment). Let's take a look at the negatives first (I hope you've got the morning / afternoon booked off, as we could be here a while).

This statement is not based in fact.

There is no evidence at all that his assumption is true. There are no published studies on the impact of disabled workers on the overall productivity of the workforce for the time period in question. He's saying that “it is almost certainly the case,” but this is just an example of the Common Sense Fallacy — it sounds like it must be true, because of our existing prejudices about the disabled. The proportion of people in employment with a disability or ill-health actually went down by 0.1% during the last quarter (I calculated this from statistics collated by the ONS), so maybe the corresponding 0.1% decrease in productivity was due to the able-bodied being a bunch of slackers. But who knows, I'm no economist. It would be almost impossible to break the data down to determine exactly what was responsible for the drop in productivity, although there have been some alternative suggestions, by, you know, actual economists who do this sort of thing for a living:

Financial Times | Four theories to explain the UK’s productivity woes

And in addition to those four reasons, there's the national embarrassment that is #Brexit:

LSE BREXIT - Why Brexit could hit productivity in the UK

So basically, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has just revealed that he hasn't got a clue what he's talking about, just like every other member of the Cabinet. But his words have power. He is speaking with authority on the usefulness and validity of 13.3 million British citizens, based on nothing more than lazy stereotyping — actually that also sounds like the rest of the Cabinet now I come to think of it.

Let's not forget the disgraceful remarks about “low-value people” made by Iain Duncan Smith. And seeing as they're "lower-worth," they don't deserve the legal minimum wage, according to Lord Freud. I'm sure that many of us Brits have an idea of what constitutes a “low-value person” right now. And it's wearing a blue rosette.

Disabled people are having their benefits cut to try to ‘encourage’ them into work.

Incapacity benefit used to be recognised as a benefit that the less-able and sick were entitled to, in order to help them live lives of a reasonable standard. The welfare state, when it was first created, was seen as something to be proud of, the sign of a progressive and caring society. The benefit didn’t give them an easy life, or solve all their problems, but it kept them out of poverty and destitution when they were unable to take on paid work because of their disability. A laudable system in a progressive society, you might say. But the Conservative governments from 2010 up to now have viewed payments to the disabled as a freebie dished out to scroungers. That belief has been reflected in the type of language used to describe the disabled and sick, and those on benefits generally.

In line with this insulting and harmful rhetoric, the government has made it extremely difficult for people who find themselves in ill-health to claim these benefits. Perhaps they think that driving people to desperation will magically cure their schizophrenia, or help their legs to grow back. These are already vulnerable human beings, given the choice of taking work they are incapable of, or going without food and shelter. As you can imagine, this hasn’t worked out well.

The government once justified their discriminatory benefit cuts by claiming that upholding disabled rights was offensive and patronising. They tried to dress it up as a new era of opening up the jobs market to those who had been excluded in the past, but in reality it caused a lot of suffering and didn’t change any of the existing attitudes toward disabled people in the workplace. In fact, there has been a measurable increase in negative attitudes to disabled people in relation to work and benefits since the Tories introduced austerity measure

How we define productivity is key.

Productivity is defined in a very specific and narrow way. Here’s the official definition from the Office for National Statistics:

“Labour productivity is calculated by dividing output by labour input. Output refers to gross value added (GVA), which is an estimate of the volume of goods and services produced by an industry, and in aggregate for the UK as a whole.”

Sounds simple, right? Goods out divided by goods in. Easy. Well, no — because the outputs and inputs are often constructed of different things, and different people have different hours, workloads, and salaries. So there are a whole load of embedded factors as well. Fortunately, economists have devised formulas for studying things that aren’t easily measured, let alone comparable.

But even then, we find problems and inconsistencies. The public sector in particular contains roles of this nature. Is the best surgeon the one who performs the most operations, or the one with the highest success rate? What about surgeons who take on the most challenging cases, compared with those who mainly do routine procedures? What value can one put on an education, especially for a school full of children with differing abilities and opportunities? The present administration favours a “small state,” and has squeezed the public sector via reduced funding and a pay cap. Ironically, this has made the public sector less efficient, because it is unable to function at optimum capacity. There is one department, however, that has seen an expansion. Or rather, private contractors have been paid millions of pounds to carry out the additional workload of the Department for Work & Pensions (small state, remember?). But in a further cruel twist, they have saved less money than it cost to run the austerity project, they've milked the government for more funding than was originally agreed, and two of these firms, Atos & G4S, have made use of fiscal loopholes to avoid paying tax to the UK Treasury. Well, what did you expect from the private sector? They need to please their shareholders, not their clients. It seems that productivity is, indeed, a difficult concept to define.

It's the economy, stupid.

There is much turmoil within the UK economy at the moment, and we can’t attribute it all to a single cause. It may be the case that blaming the sick and disabled is a very thin smokescreen for the government’s own failings. The economy ebbs and flows naturally — in a perfect free market (which, admittedly, we don't have), we rely on this self-correcting feature. However, following the 2008 recession, the recovery in the UK has been slower than for other countries.

A government can bring in economic policies that will influence the economic cycle; to promote growth, or reduce unemployment, say. But this government hasn’t done so well — while unemployment is down, underemployment is up. Most people on benefits are in work — showing that actually, work doesn’t pay at the moment. Real earnings (accounting for inflation) have decreased this year, and the value of sterling has been falling consistently since 2005. And then there was Brexit — talk about us being the “sick man of Europe.”

Successive governments have promoted the ideal of full employment, with the two most recent Prime Ministers touting it as some sort of moral imperative. But there aren’t enough jobs for everyone, so some people will be left wanting — because there is no safety net. The process of claiming Jobseeker’s allowance is also an arduous one, with financial penalties applied for arbitrary reasons. And yet — snatching the rug away from under people’s feet somehow hasn’t magically created new jobs for the unemployed to apply for. If only we could figure out what is wrong with this model…

The most recent Labour government did at least try to provide those jobs for the terminally unemployable by expanding the public sector as part of an overarching reform strategy to improve municipal services. This was heavily criticised as wasteful by the Conservative opposition, but you can’t have it both ways. You can have full employment with inefficiencies, or you can maximise productivity, but with fewer workers. Whichever option you favour, families still need to put food on the table.

Reframing the Question

As well as the swells and shrinkages of any economy, there are many other things that can have an external effect. Something that is being talked about a lot at the moment is job security within an increasingly automated world. We don’t know yet if we will find even more sophisticated jobs for humans to perform as robots take over much of the production and calculation-based roles of the last century, but we do know that the robots are coming. Some countries are trialling the Universal Basic Income, a subsistence-level benefit paid to every citizen, regardless of their private income. This would replace any existing benefits system and ensure a minimum standard of living is possible for everyone, independent of fluctuations in the economy or jobs market. The practicalities of such a system are far more complicated than my brief description, but that’s an overview of how it’s supposed to work. We will find out how it actually plays out in practice after a few years of these experiments, no doubt.

Selecting the disabled as a group to blame the economy’s problems on isn’t just lazy, it’s almost certainly wrong. There are plenty of non-disabled people who are a massive drain on resources — I know, because I’ve worked with some of them! Factors, such as people stuck in jobs they have no interest in or micromanagement by horrific bosses, are more plausible explanations for a reduction in productivity. Aside from that, there is a huge variety of disabilities with effects that vary from person to person, and people generally find their ways to manage around them. This means that they could be terrible at some things, but exceptionally skilled at others. The fact that someone has a disability doesn’t make them inherently useless.

Looking to the Future

With a changing jobs market, an ageing population, and more people living with serious health conditions, the system we have is unsustainable. We need to accept that more of us will become reliant on support from others, and if that support isn’t forthcoming from the government, then we will see an even greater increase in social problems than what we have now, after only seven years of Tory rule (they have done a lot of damage in that short time). Those who are more fortunate may be able to ignore the poverty and deprivation visible in our town centres for the time being, but there will come a time that they are affected, if we allow the present system to continue.

We need to change our way of thinking. The Conservative government, and their mercenaries Atos and Maximus have spread ideas in society about the sick and disabled being “skivers not strivers,” which has led to a shocking rise in hate crimes committed against disabled people. There is an assumption in Britain that those on welfare need to prove that they are worthy of such payments, and even if they do, they are still treated with contempt and derision.

It was not always like this in the UK. When the modern welfare state was introduced in 1946, it was seen as a chance to make Britain better. It was there to support and care for all citizens, “from cradle to grave”. Everyone paid into it via their taxes, and it funded the NHS, education, pensions, and sickness and unemployment benefit. It was designed to ensure a minimum standard of living for everyone, so as to eliminate what Sir William Beveridge identified as the Five Giants, in his revolutionary report of 1942: Idleness, Want, Squalor, Disease and Ignorance. Today we are seeing the return of the Five Giants as a result of policies that pare back the benefits system and the NHS.

These state structures benefit us all — they protect the integrity of the workforce and offer a safety net to the individual in hard times. That one thing that Philip Hammond was right about is that sick & disabled people aren’t performing at their peak if they’re forced in to work when they should be resting and recovering. Disability benefits exist for people who aren’t capable of working — it shouldn’t be a negotiation. This Conservative government mistakenly believes that driving people into poverty will encourage them to take jobs that don’t exist and that they aren’t well enough to perform. The DWP is one of the most opaque & unaccountable government departments, and its main purpose seems to be creating obstacles for those entitled to state help. If we want to reduce inefficiency, then we should start there.

The UN has criticised the UK government for violating the human rights of disabled people. We are supposed to be a first-world, civilised society, but we have a government that promotes selfishness and doles out punishment for becoming ill. It’s an extension of our workplace presenteeism culture that is yet another source of inefficiency. We are required to be switched on and visibly working far more than in previous decades, but we are achieving less. Employees in the UK regularly avoid taking time off sick due to this culture of scrutiny, risking spreading their germs and making themselves more ill through not allowing proper recovery time. Forcing unhealthy people into work is risky for employee and employer — and yet this is enshrined in our welfare system as the norm.

It’s no wonder that productivity is down — but it’s not the fault of the disabled. It’s our presumptuous and spiteful culture that draws our attention away from the real problems. We’re so busy demanding that benefit claimants account for every penny they accept from the state, that we don't notice that society is falling to pieces through underinvestment and personal greed. A society that is rife with social problems is inherently inefficient — but it’s so much easier to blame somebody else than take responsibility for a mess of our own making.