Calvin

While preparing for his first practical teaching placement in a school, Calvin was told there was a good chance the education department ‘wouldn’t take someone like me (i.e. disabled) to be a teacher’.

Calvin told the Royal Commission ‘this conversation … set the tone’ for many more experiences around employment over the next decade.

Calvin dropped out of his education course and started working in the disability sector.

When, working as a support worker, he needed to increase his hours, Calvin approached several employment agencies. He received two call backs on the same day and said the conversations were vastly different.

During the first call, he revealed that his disability was a key driver in his decision to work in the disability sector. The recruiter responded, ‘Well let’s just leave it here then. All our staff have to pass a skills test and since you obviously aren’t going to pass, we won’t bother.’

Calvin challenged her but she insisted ‘a disabled person wouldn’t pass’. ‘I was wasting my time,’ she said.

‘It had been many years since I had been made to feel ashamed of my disability, but after this interaction, of course I did once again,’ said Calvin.

The second call, in contrast, was ‘a genuinely positive experience’. The recruiter said as long as Calvin passed a medical test, which all staff had to pass, his disability was not a barrier but rather ‘a benefit’.

In subsequent years his experiences in the workplace have fallen somewhere between these two extremes.

Calvin has often been asked to complete a workplace health and safety risk assessment which is not required by all staff. Not only does Calvin find this discriminatory, but it costs money to see a medical practitioner. Calvin believes this equates to ‘having to pay to get a job’.

When he applied for a public sector role, he was required to provide evidence of his disability. He gave the recruiter a copy of the doctor’s initial diagnosis of his genetic condition but was told the letter was too old. ‘A recruiter insisted I provide new evidence that my genes are, in fact, still mutated,’ Calvin told us.

Calvin believes it is almost impossible to prove you have not been offered a job or job interview because of a disability. He would like the Disability Discrimination Act and related laws amended so ‘the onus is not on the complainant to demonstrate hardship and that they have suffered a tangible loss’.

He says trying to report discrimination within a workplace is also fraught and is often met with ‘I’m sure they didn’t mean it that way. You’re taking it wrong. You probably misunderstood them’.

The best employment experience Calvin has had is when the employer asked ‘what do you need?’

‘They did not target me and demand a risk assessment … they did not demand evidence and declarations. They shut up, they listened and moved on.’

Calvin was able to work from home which allowed him more time in the morning to address his own needs.

He says this is an example of a ‘reasonable accommodation request’ people with disabilities are often denied.

COVID-19 has demonstrated ‘reasonable accommodation requests … are in fact reasonable’ and possible.

Calvin commends the government for programs like RecruitAbility, but he would like state and local governments to implement something similar. He is disappointed the NDIA ‘crows about achieving a 14% identification rate’. He believes the NDIA should at least achieve representation, which he says is around 18%.