Evaluation of the Act on Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People, 2003-2008
At the end of 2003, the Act on Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People (AET/
DCI) became effective for the fields of labour and vocational training. The Act’s objective is to promote the equal treatment of chronically ill or disabled people and to combat discri-mination against them, by means of the individual legal protection of people belonging to these groups. As commissioned by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, in this research report, the Verwey-Jonker Institute has conducted an evaluation of the functioning of this Act in the course of the past five years. The central questions of this evaluation study are the following:
Is the Act on Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People applicable in a legal
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sense (is it clear, univocal, practicable)?
Is the Act on Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People well-known enough?,
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Who has contributed to this greater publicity during the last five years?
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Is the Act on Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People functioning
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vely in the fields of labour and vocational training (with regard to individual legal protec-tion and the ‘oil stain effect’)?
What is the mutual dynamic between the modal sphere (and legal practice) of the Act,
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the professional spheres, and society in general?
To answer these questions, the Verwey-Jonker Institute consulted documents, literature, jurisprudence and judgements of the Equal Treatment Commission (ETC), websites, national and regional newspapers, radio and television news broadcasts, and public campaigns. The researchers also consulted 47 experts, coming either from organised interest groups of disa-bled or chronically ill people, or from the fields of labour and vocational training.
The main conclusions of this study are:
The Act on Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People is clear, univocal, and 1.
practicable in a legal sense. The individual legal protection of disabled and chronically
ill people has improved: the Act puts a check on both direct and indirect discrimination, while employers and educational institutes are obliged, within reason, to make effec-tive adjustments. In the fields of labour and vocational training, the Act provides a clear standard. The Act enables people to appeal to the right to equal treatment even in a pre-contractual phase. Thus, the Act on Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People has a wider reach than the concept of being a ‘good employer’.
The Act is primarily applied by the Equal Treatment Commission (ETC). Civil judges or administrative judges have hardly passed any judgements, in which the AET/DCI (co-) provided the grounds for the dispute. The rareness of the appeal to the AET/DCI by civil or administrative judges is caused, among other things, by the availability of alternative legislation and regulations. These provide other possibilities for the legal protection and participation of disabled or chronically ill people.
In the fields directly involved, all parties (labour and vocational training, as well as the 2.
relevant organised interest groups) indicate that the Act is sufficiently well-known. Indi-vidual citizens are less familiar with the existence and the objective of the Act than (the management of) institutes and organisations.
This provides a bottleneck in the functioning of the AET/DCI, since a basic assumption underlying the Act is that employees or students are the ones to raise the matter of their need for adjustments or their unequal treatment at work or during their training. The general rule is that the closer to the work floor or classroom, the less known the AET/DCI is. These fields want the government to set up more publicity on the AET/DCI, specifically aimed at citizens with a disability or chronic illness. Such publicity campaigns will be more effective when they take the form of media campaigns. For citizens, the media are their main source of information about equal treatment legislation. During the past five years, however, the Act has hardly been mentioned in the media. Campaigns like Geknipt voor de juiste baan [Cut out for the right job] have not made a connection with the Act on Equal Treatment of Disabled and Chronically Ill People.
Maybe the unfamiliarity with the Act provides the reason for the many misunderstandings 3.
about it. A considerable part of those appealing (both citizens and institutes) does not realise that the AET/DCI only applies to the fields of labour and vocational training. This can be concluded from the fact that a large number of apparently unfounded verdicts involved events regarding fields where the Act is not yet applicable, such as public trans-port, commodities and services, and primary education.
Hardly anyone outside the ETC knows that the AET/DCI also applies to Hardly anyone outside the ETC knows that the AET/DCI also applies to discrimina-tion based on supposed disabilities or chronic illnesses. In addidiscrimina-tion, the majority of the professionals and representatives in the fields involved believe that an appeal, advice, or verdict of the ETC will not result in any substantial individual benefit for the disabled or chronically ill person in question. However, information provided by the ETC shows that no less than 70% of their judgements has direct consequences.
In the field of vocational training, it is often thought that the AET/DCI only applies to
exams and other test moments. Here, it is not clear that the AET/DCI applies to the ac-cessibility of the entire training trajectory.
According to experts from the labour field, the AET/DCI has hardly any significance for the pre-contractual phase, while they do expect a considerable appeal to the Act with regard to adjustments on the work floor. Yet, the verdicts of the ETC belie both these as-sumptions. The AET/DCI actually does play a role in selection procedures, while verdicts with regard to adjustments are in fact relatively rare. A second misunderstanding is the assumption that work placements do not fall under the AET/DCI. Nothing is further from the truth; work placements are the responsibility of the training institutes and as such, they actually do fall under the AET/DCI. Furthermore, employers express their concern and irritation about the adjustments to which the AET/DCI supposedly obliges them, in particular the additional financial and administrative burden related to them. Yet, there are more grounds for concern about the administrative side than for concern about the financial burden. Employers are often compensated for the expenses involved because of other legislation and regulations.
In general, the mutual dynamic between the Act’s modal sphere and legal practice, the 4.
professional spheres, and society as a whole is limited. Beside those directly involved, there is little contact about the verdicts of the ETC. Judges, lawyers, the unions and employers’ organisations, training institutes, student organisations, and the general pu-blic are hardly discussing these judgements with each other, nor are they debating them among themselves.
This does not mean that the Act has not had any ‘oil stain effect’. In the shadow of the Act, the vocational training sector in particular has executed many interventions to promote the equal treatment of students with limitations and to prevent them from being discriminated against. Institutions for higher education, especially, are actively improving the accessibility of their programmes. Since Student-Related Funding has come into effect in intermediate vocational education too, as of 1 January 2006, this sector has shown an increased interest in students with a disability. At the Regional Education Centres, however, - where most of the Dutch population and of the chronically ill receive their education -, the level of improvement of individual and structural accessibility for chronically ill and disabled people varies greatly.
In the field of labour, equal treatment thought seems to have gained access less demonstrably and concretely than in the field of vocational training, apart from a few exceptions in large companies and companies in the non-profit sector. Although the unions are familiar with both combating discrimination on the work floor and social security, they are not specifically in tune with the content of the Act on Equal Treatment of Disa-bled and Chronically Ill People.
Employers’ organisations show ambivalence towards the Act.
Verwey-Jonker Instituut