Disability employee rights day
Accessibility is the key to assisting people with disabilities to lead a full life and pursue a career. Unfortunately, we don't yet live in a world where products, environments and services are designed so that all people can use them without the need for adaptation or specialised design. Until we get to the point where universal design is the norm, disabled people like myself often need specialised equipment or reasonable adjustments made so that they can participate fully in all aspects of life. This came with many challenges as I was born with cerebral palsy which affects my movement and coordination. Luckily, the father of a colleague who had the same condition as me had created a machine to help him do his job. He made the same machine for me which enabled me to become just as efficient as my colleagues.
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Employee Rights
Accommodating the needs of persons with disabilities is one of the most common human rights issues in the workplace. While the principles and concepts described above also apply here, this section highlights specific issues that employers may face when responding to requests for accommodation made by employees with disabilities. Section 17 of the Code provides that people with disabilities have the right to have their individual needs accommodated short of undue hardship, to allow them to perform the essential duties of their job.
Where a person cannot perform the essential duties, even with accommodation, or where accommodation would amount to undue hardship, a decision not to employ the person would not be discriminatory. Once employers are aware of employee needs, they must take steps to meet the duty to accommodate.
If the person cannot carry out the non-essential job duties, he or she must be accommodated to do so, or these duties must be re-assigned. Accommodation must be provided to enable a person with a disability to perform the essential duties of the job, to the point of undue hardship. It is not enough to assume that the person cannot perform an essential requirement. Instead, there must be an objective determination of that fact. Example: An employee who works in a copy shop has limited arm movement due to a shoulder injury.
Various types of copy paper are delivered by truck every week and need to be stacked and stored. Operating the copy equipment to fill orders would be an essential duty. If essential duties cannot be performed in different ways, the employer must explore other accommodation resources that may enable the person to do the essential duties. This accommodation may include adjusting the performance standard as long as doing so does not result in undue hardship. The duty to accommodate a disability exists for needs that are known.
Organizations and persons responsible for accommodation are not, as a rule, expected to accommodate disabilities they are unaware of. However, some people may not be able to disclose or communicate their needs because of the nature of their disability. In such cases, employers should try to help a person who is clearly unwell or perceived to have a disability, by offering help and accommodation.
This is very important if an employee is suspected of having a mental illness. On the other hand, employers are not expected to diagnose illness or "second-guess" the health status of an employee.
Example: An employer is not aware of an employee's drug addiction, but perceives that a disability might exist.
The employer sees that the employee is having difficulty performing, and is showing signs of distress. If the employer imposes serious sanctions or fires the employee for poor performance, without any progressive performance management and attempts to accommodate, these actions may be found to have violated the Code. Everyone is required to take part co-operatively in the accommodation process. The employer must accept accommodation requests in good faith unless there are legitimate reasons for acting otherwise.
The employee must answer questions or provide information about relevant restrictions. Employers should limit requests for information to those reasonably related to the nature of limitation or restriction, to respond to accommodation requests. The purpose of the questions must be carefully considered and be limited to the information that is reasonably required to assess needs and make the accommodation.
The amount of information needed will depend on the circumstances. For example, it may be appropriate to ask for more information on a first absence after a sudden unexpected departure, than in the case of an absence related to an existing and known disability where the employer has already received medical information. Ideally, the employer will clearly identify what information is needed and why. For example, the employer could provide a list of questions for the doctor to answer:.
For example, an employer can ask whether accommodation is needed related to any side effects of prescribed medication, but should not ask what medications the person has been prescribed. This could, in some cases, reveal the diagnosis and is not necessary for accommodation.
If the doctor provides a diagnosis or information that has not been requested, proceed very carefully and make sure that any decisions made relate to restrictions and accommodation needs rather than assumptions based on the diagnosis or other information provided. The employer should then accept the information provided and make the accommodation. In cases of extended chronic illness, the employer should accept more general notes and should not require a note for each absence.
While the employer is entitled to get all the information needed to make the accommodation, it must also accept accommodation requests in good faith and respect the dignity of employees. A request for a second opinion, an opinion from a specialist or an independent medical examination IME must be necessary to provide accommodation. Such a request should not be made to refute whether the employee has the disability in the first place or to avoid providing the accommodation.
The employee shows no observable symptoms of illness in the workplace, and the employer suspects that the employee is making up a disability to get more flexibility in her work arrangements.
The employer wants to prove this by having the employee take an independent medical examination. Such an approach would not be consistent with the Code. The legitimacy of a request for more medical information will depend on the information already received. A request for more medical information will be appropriate if there is a reasonable and objective basis for seeing the initial information as inadequate or inaccurate.
Examples might be if there appears to be a problem with the degree of expertise or type of expertise of the doctor who provided the initial medical opinion, or if there is some reasonable basis to believe that the employee is not fit to do the job despite the existence of a medical report to the contrary. Document reasons for requesting more medical evidence. Example: After a serious car accident, an employee is cleared by her doctor to return to work.
On more than one occasion, she becomes dizzy at the end of her hour night shift operating a machine and narrowly misses hurting herself. The employer asks for more information from her doctor about possible accommodations. The employer then asks the employee to attend an assessment by a doctor of her choosing, with expertise in workplace accommodations. If a second opinion or independent medical exam IME is warranted, a good approach is to select a doctor who is acceptable to both the employee and the employer, and the union if there is one rather than insisting that an employee meet with a doctor that the employer has chosen.
Give the employee enough information to understand the purpose of such an examination, who will conduct it and what assessments will be used. Employers should accept medical reports in good faith. In some cases, there may be conflicting information provided by two medical experts. Deciding which report to follow will depend on the facts of the particular situation and the following kinds of factors:. Employers are entitled to contact employees on leave if it is reasonably required.
For example, contact may be needed to assess accommodation requirements, the length of absence, changes in the prognosis or to find out whether there may be a potential return to work date.
Contacts could be used to show the employee that they are missed and valued by the organization. Such contacts may show the employee that they continue to be a part of the organization and could help with a smooth return to work.
On the other hand, repeated contacts requesting information, saying that the workplace needs the employee, or asking for a premature return to work whether implicit or explicit , especially over a short period of time, may constitute harassment. Ideally, if possible, employers should identify early on how often and how the employee wants to be contacted.
This may depend on the nature of leave requirement. For example, an employer might be asked not to contact an employee who is off due to work-related clinical depression and wants to keep this private, but may be asked to keep in touch regularly with an employee who is off for cancer treatment and wants to know about workplace events. Stigma and stereotypes, for example relating to mental illness, should not play a factor in decisions about how often to contact an employee.
Accommodation is a fundamental and integral part of the right to equal treatment in returning to work. Both employers and unions must co-operate in accommodating employees who are returning to work after a disability-related absence. Occupational Health and Safety committees, which include representatives of both management and labour, can help work out individual accommodations for employees with disabilities who are returning to the workplace.
Section 17 of the Code states that the right to return to work for persons with disabilities only exists if the worker can fulfill the essential job duties after accommodation short of undue hardship.
If a person cannot do the essential job duties, despite the employer's effort to accommodate short of undue hardship, there is no right to return to work. This right under the Code applies regardless of the size of the workplace or the length of time the employee has worked for the company. This is different from the corresponding provisions in the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act. For disability leave, there is no fixed rule about how long an employee with a disability may be absent before the duty to accommodate has been met.
Also important are the predictability of absence, both in terms of when it will end and if it may recur, and the frequency of the absence. It is more likely that the duty to accommodate will continue with a better prognosis, regardless of the length of absence.
The duty to accommodate does not necessarily guarantee a limitless right to return to work. On the other hand, a return to work program that relies on arbitrarily selected cut-offs or requires an inflexible return date may be challenged as a violation of the Code. While an employer may be anxious to have an employee return to his or her job as soon as possible, forcing an employee to return too soon can jeopardize the successful re-integration of that employee into the workplace.
This aggravates his medical condition leading to a patchy attendance record, and setting in motion a discriminatory sequence of events ending in his termination from employment. The term "alternative work" means different work or work that does not necessarily involve similar skills, responsibilities and compensation.
Although accommodation in the pre-disability job is always preferable, it may not always be possible. The Commission has taken the position that accommodation in a job other than the pre-disability job may be appropriate in some cases. Severe substance abuse, such as alcoholism and the abuse of legal and illicit drugs, is classified as a form of substance dependence and is a disability within the meaning of the Code. When a person's use of drugs or alcohol reaches the stage of severe abuse, addiction or dependency there may be significant impairment or distress.
When a person, including a recreational alcohol or drug user, is perceived to have an addiction or dependency on drugs or alcohol, the Code operates to protect that person in the workplace.
The person who had a drug or alcohol problem in the past but no longer suffers from an ongoing disability is also protected. The Commission's position is that pre-employment drug and alcohol testing is generally not permitted. However, the Ontario Divisional Court has held there was no breach of the Code where an offer of safety-sensitive employment was made conditional on passing a urinalysis drug test, and the employer's policy did not provide for automatic termination on a positive drug test, but instead allowed for accommodation to the point of undue hardship.
Drug and alcohol testing on the job may be justifiable in certain cases. To decide whether testing is necessary, consider the following questions:. Drug and alcohol testing that is not related to job performance has been found to violate employee rights. Therefore, policies on drug and alcohol testing must not arbitrarily target groups of employees. Example: An employer requires only new or returning employees to be tested.
This might not be justifiable in terms of the stated objectives of the testing policy. As drug tests by means of urinalysis do not actually measure impairment but rather simply show the presence of drugs in the body, random drug testing of employees by urinalysis is an unjustifiable intrusion into the rights of the individual.
Further, even random drug testing of oral fluid, which arguably does a better job of measuring current impairment from drugs, has been found to violate the terms of a collective agreement. As an Ontario arbitrator recently held, "Arbitrators have concluded that to subject employees to an alcohol or drug test when there is no reasonable cause to do so, or in the absence of an accident or near miss and outside of the context of a rehabilitation plan for an employee with an acknowledged problem, is an unjustified affront to the dignity and privacy of employees which falls beyond the balancing of any legitimate employer interest, including deterrence and the enforcement of safe practices.
In the case of random alcohol testing, the use of breathalysers is a minimally intrusive yet highly accurate measure of both consumption and actual impairment. As a result, the Commission supports the view that random alcohol testing is acceptable in safety sensitive positions, especially where staff supervision is minimal or non-existent, but only if the employer meets its duty to accommodate the needs of people who test positive.
Employment for disabled people
To find out the traffic light setting for your region, see covid More information about workplace vaccination requirements. Disabled people are less likely to be employed than the general population or other minorities. Employment for disabled people is often limited by opportunity and people's attitudes rather than disability. Although one in five working age people in New Zealand have some form of disability, most have little or no barrier to working in some kind of paid employment given the right support. Many highly capable New Zealanders could be part of the workforce if barriers to their employment were removed.
Employees' rights and entitlements
The duty to accommodate is a broad equality concept that applies to all grounds of discrimination covered under human rights legislation and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Every human rights law in Canada protects workers from discrimination at work, including disability-based discrimination. Discrimination could occur any time that a workplace rule, job requirement, policy, or practice results in a barrier for a worker with a disability. It may mean a temporary or permanent reassignment to other duties. Many other forms of accommodation exist as well. At the end of the day, it usually involves treating that worker differently, so he or she can be treated equally and maintains dignity. Send a message to Prime Minister Trudeau and ask him to fix long-term care, now.
Human Rights at Work
Federal government websites often end in. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site. The site is secure. Federal agencies are required by law to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified employees with disabilities. The Federal Government may provide you with a reasonable accommodation based on appropriate requests unless so doing will result in undue hardship to the agencies.
State Disability Insurance (“SDI”): Your Legal Rights
The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public. The purpose of the law is to make sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. The ADA gives civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. It guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations, employment, transportation, state and local government services, and telecommunications. The ADA is divided into five titles or sections that relate to different areas of public life.
What to do if you become disabled
Upcoming elections for all treaty bodies. Optional Protocol. Working methods. Call for comments on Draft General comments. Regional consultations and Guidelines on deinstitutionalisation-Article States parties reports. Lists of issues LOIs.
Disability is one of 9 'protected characteristics' covered by discrimination law Equality Act The law protects people against discrimination, harassment and victimisation at work. Employers must do all they reasonably can to protect people from discrimination and take steps to prevent disability discrimination at work.
Jump to main content. Jump to navigation. Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities -- a day to unify around ensuring a better, more equitable world. An annual celebration promoted by the United Nations since , the day is dedicated to helping spread awareness and understanding of disability issues while championing the extraordinary achievements and contributions of persons with disabilities across the globe. Currently, around 1 billion people live with a disability, making up around 15 percent of the world's total population. Since taking office, President Obama has been committed to nurturing a society that values the contributions of all citizens, at home and abroad -- from expanding educational and employment opportunities for people with disabilities, to enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act, to increasing accessibility to innovation and technology, to signing the CRPD.
The Ontario Human Rights Code the Code is the law that provides for equal rights and opportunities, and freedom from discrimination. The Code recognizes the dignity and worth of every person in Ontario. It applies to the social areas of employment, housing, goods, facilities and services, contracts, and membership in unions, trade or professional associations. In employment, people with disabilities are entitled to the same opportunities and benefits as everyone else. This includes job applications, recruitment, training, transfers, promotions, apprenticeship terms, dismissal, layoffs and situations where an employee returns to work after a disability-related absence. It covers rates of pay, overtime, hours of work, holidays, benefits, shift work, discipline and performance evaluations.
If you are an employee , you will have a contract of employment. If you are an 'employee' then you gain extra rights, but you may have to work for a qualifying period. This means the rights do not start on your first day of your job, but only after you have had the same employer for a period of time.
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