New rules for employment of persons with disabilities: what will change
16 January 10:47
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has adopted draft law No. 5344-d aimed at protecting and supporting the rights of people with disabilities in the field of employment. This was announced by the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy, Danylo Hetmantsev, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
The bill was supported by 228 deputies.
“We are convinced that there can be no business on people with disabilities, and therefore we are significantly democratizing and modernizing the system of assistance and support, breaking the long-standing monopoly,” Hetmantsev wrote.
According to him, the draft law
- expands the number of jobs offered to people with disabilities by including state and local government bodies in the relevant list.
- introduces state standards for workplace equipment (arrangement) and provision of reasonable adaptation of workplaces at enterprises and organizations;
- replaces humiliating fines for unemployed persons with disabilities with transparent and fair payments by entrepreneurs for job creation.
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What will change for people with disabilities
Oksana Zholnovych, Minister of Social Policy of Ukraine, emphasized that the adopted draft law significantly brings the conditions for the employment of people with disabilities closer to European standards, where more than 50% of people with disabilities are employed. In Ukraine, this figure is about 16%.
In particular, the draft law provides for the removal of legislative restrictions (people can work in any job except for those that are directly contraindicated for health reasons), and the same rules for the employment of people with disabilities will be applied to the private and public sectors of the economy.
The provisions of the adopted draft law also include:
Social support at the workplace: a person with a disability receives social support services at the workplace (in cooperation with the employer, labor collective), and may additionally involve a personal assistant and sign language interpreter.
Professional adaptation: the law provides for the involvement of private agencies for the employment of people with disabilities, financing of education and retraining of people with disabilities.
Financing of workplace arrangement: the law introduces state standards for workplace arrangement for different types of loss of functionality; an employer may receive compensation for the use of reasonable workplace adaptations for an employee with a disability at the expense of a specially created fund filled with targeted contributions; a person with a disability who operates as an individual entrepreneur may also receive compensation for the arrangement of his or her workplace.
Employers have a choice: hire people with disabilities within the standard or pay a targeted contribution to the fund to support the employment of people with disabilities.
Support for social entrepreneurship: not only enterprises of public organizations of people with disabilities, but also any enterprises that employ the number of people with disabilities specified in the law can receive benefits and compensation; the criteria for establishing enterprises for labor integration and protected employment are expanded.
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Criticism of the draft law
Representatives of public associations of people with disabilities have been criticizing the draft law for the second year in a row. They call it unlawful and destructive, as more than 900 amendments that were introduced to the draft law with the help of the public after the first reading were rejected.
They believe that the draft law 5344-d contradicts the current legislation and the real needs of people with disabilities.
In particular, the document
- exempts a large number of private sector employers from the obligation to employ people with disabilities. Such employers will include entities with the highest number of accidents/occupational diseases at work. These entities have long dreamed of this, but for thirty years they have not been able to implement these illegal initiatives because of the socially significant position of the previous cadences of Ukrainian parliaments;
- declares European integration, but in reality only imitates the introduction of incentive mechanisms for employers to hire people with disabilities and expand employment opportunities for this category of people. Most of what is presented as “innovations” in this regard are reformulated and/or distorted provisions of the current legislation that can already be implemented, but the Ministry of Social Policy and the Social Protection Fund simply do not allocate funds for this.
- cancels (as of the date of entry into force) financial support for hundreds of existing enterprises of public associations of persons with disabilities, which today provide jobs for thousands of people with disabilities, including those enterprises that provide their products to the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
- abolishes tax exemptions for hundreds of enterprises of public associations of persons with disabilities , which today employ thousands of people with disabilities;
- abolishes the rules on printing literature in Braille for blind citizens of Ukraine and the mechanism for financing the production of such literature. At the same time, the draft law includes declarative provisions that the state will ensure the production of audiobooks and the printing of literature in Braille. It does not specify who exactly will be responsible for this, nor at what expense;
- creates the appearance of mandatory provision of social services to persons with disabilities (social support at the workplace, personal assistant, sign language interpretation, etc.) The relevant provisions are written in a way that does not make it clear who should ensure the mandatory provision of such services – employers or the state – and how.
- cancels funding for education, social, vocational, physical culture and sports, and labor rehabilitation of persons with disabilities (excludes the definition of labor rehabilitation of persons with disabilities and the entire article on this type of rehabilitation). Nonsense – the draft law on ensuring the rights of persons with disabilities to work excludes from the legislation the norms on labor and other types of rehabilitation and their financing, instead of standardizing and developing these types of rehabilitation;
- legalizes the dismissal of employees who suffer an accident/occupational disease at work. An employer who does not wish to continue labor relations with those injured at work may dismiss them by paying them three times the average salary for six months;
- declares tax benefits and financial support for non-existent labor integration enterprises and protected employment enterprises.
Public associations of persons with disabilities note that the draft law contradicts the Budget and Tax Codes of Ukraine, as well as the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada. Its implementation will require amendments to numerous codes and laws, which will significantly complicate its implementation.