a decade Ago, Rocío Luque, malaga 38-year-old, suffered an accident in which he almost lost his right hand. “Thank God I saved”, he explains. “But I lost my job as a nurse. It was a week that I got fixed. It was a vocation.” Andrés Alonso, for his part, left the world of construction after the crisis of 2000. The performance of their office resulted in three herniated discs that will incapacitaron for any physical effort. “I came to say that where I was going to work for me with my age and my injuries,” recalls this madrid of 56 years. Both requested the grade for the disabled, and both have a 33% granted. Part of the 1.8 million Spanish people of working age who have a recognized disability, according to the latest data collected in the Report Olivenza of the State Observatory of Disability. They have gotten a job, something that in Spain you can only claim one of every four people of this group.
Are two cases of insertion of work that does not abound in Spain. According to estimates by the INE, only 25.6% of persons with disabilities has a job, a percentage far at 64%, which reach the general population. “The shortfall comes dragged out of a historical situation of discrimination against persons with disabilities,” contextualizes Pepa Torres, head of the Employment Committee of the Spanish Committee of Representatives of Persons with Disabilities (CERMI). “The rate of employment and activity are growing, but very slowly”.
The situation compounded the breach of the General Law of Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which requires companies with more than 50 employees a minimum quota of hiring 2%, something which in practice it usually does not happen. “The few studies and data show that there is a noncompliance”, expands Towers. “But it is true that in recent years there is a greater awareness, and gradually begins to cover this percentage”. One of the main causes, according to CERMI, is the misinformation of the companies and the ignorance of this legal obligation.
A change of life radical
“I found it difficult to assume such a radical change of life,” recalls Rocio Luque, who from the age of 19 he was working as a technical nurse in several hospitals in the province of Malaga. During the rehabilitation of his hand, which was amputated, “because the tendons and artery were well”, not lost the hope of returning to his job always. But the physical limitations prevented him from developing the tasks with ease. “I had to start writing with the left hand, for example. I was day-to-day and little-by-little. At first I was nervous, in a bad mood. Then you live with it,” he explains. Andrés Alonso, for his part, also went through a period of uncertainty. After the closure of the small company that he owned and a back surgery to treat hernias, and was looking for work four years ago. “When you take so much time doing nothing it seems that with 56 you’re finished,” he reflects. “But I’ve never retreated”.
Rocio Luque found a job six years ago. A friend told her about the special employment centre Integrates, belonging to the company Clece. After a process of several interviews, got a job as a security guard at an insurance company in Malaga. Andres Alonso works from 2017 in the service of cleaning the madrid Hospital Ramón y Cajal, also managed by the same company. He started making substitutions and is now fixed in the night shift. The recruitment by centers of special employment, one of the way more frequent insertion, gave up work last year to 82.981 people, according to the Report Olivenza.
the battle of The work and training
in Addition to the shortage of employment within this group, the conditions also are far from what they claim to experts and associations. According to the Report Olivenza, in 2017 were hired to 308.376 people with disabilities, both in the company’s ordinary and in the special centres of employment, which represents 1.4% of the total of contracts signed in Spain. In addition, the high seasonality and an average salary of 19.297 euros, a 17.1% lower than that of the general population. The picture is worse among the young, a segment that registers 23.393 people: of these, 36.9% were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, and its insertion is barely above 25%. “Our essential claim in the employment is a law of inclusion that give a boost to this situation,” says Torres.
Another workhorse is the level of training. Only 15% of people with disabilities have higher studies by 33.9% of persons without disabilities. In addition, the absence of training is 6% in this group, while among the general population is the residual. “This phenomenon has a tremendous impact on employment,” stresses Torres. “People who are training, regardless of the type of disability, are much more likely to participate in the labour market”. This factor is compounded by a population’s active aging. “If age is a factor of exclusion in general, imagine yourself in our collective,” she laments.
Both Luque and Alonso considered to be fundamental to have found a job to continue with your life. Alonso clean night the kitchens of the hospital with a machine adapted to so that your back does not suffer. Grateful for the understanding of their peers. “Help Me and have been patient enough to appreciate my progress”, values. Luque needed time to get back to feeling located. “As I’m in a mutual accident, every time you enter a patient who will have to give points I get to treat you as the nurse that was”, she says with humor. “But apart from that, I feel useful, with good colleagues, with a full life. I’ve always tried to make my disability I do not limit”.
A single drive
Clece has a unit to support its workers with functional diversity “only in the corporate landscape,” says Santiago Sánchez-Seco, responsible for the central area of Spain. “We are the only company that has a unit of these characteristics,” he says, and explains that the law stipulates the obligation of these units to the special centres of employment, but not for the ordinary companies. “Our job is to be in contact with these workers and to put ourselves at your disposal. Accompany them in their home work, in your presentation to colleagues or to solve the difficulties that may be present, for example.” Clece employs about 7,000 employees with functional diversity, approximately 9% of the workforce. Sánchez-Seco believes that such units should exist in all companies, and to attend to any worker. “Not only to the vulnerable: someone who doesn’t know how to manage the paperwork, employees with difficulties of reconciliation… Anyone might need it”, you understand.
