By Madeline Baker, Times Chronicle
I was only five years out of high school when the provincial government approved me for Persons with Disabilities status and began paying my way through life, and believe me, it wasn’t for lack of trying to maintain employment, finish my schooling and start a career, or do anything at all to earn a regular paycheque instead.
By that point, two attempts to earn a degree and one six-month stint at a high-pressure entry level retail job had culminated in my admission to a psychiatric ward, bringing with me several chronic physical problems brought on by the state of my mental health.
Both of these rites of passage – the university experience and the “unskilled” job – are built to test the mettle of teenagers and young adults who are taking their first steps into what we so proudly call the real world. They’re made and meant to be intensely stressful make-or-break experiences that shape the entire course of a person’s life going forward.
And what of the people who break?
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which apparently exists “to increase awareness of the positive outcomes of hiring persons with disabilities in Canada.” Campaigns like this tend to present disabled people as less able to do the work of able-bodied people, but still deserving of employee status.
Seldom do they address the issue of people with mental illnesses, chronic illnesses, or other ongoing struggles that have no impact at all on their ability to do the work, but practically guarantee that they will be considered irresponsible, erratic, undedicated, and ultimately replaceable employees by workplaces that can’t afford to accommodate them.
The accommodations and accessibility improvements I would have needed to maintain a lifelong career wouldn’t have been mobility aid ramps and automated doors, screen readers, ergonomic office equipment, or other common physical upgrades for which employers can usually receive big, juicy grants.
What I needed were long periods of sick leave when my symptoms became too severe to bring to the workplace, and sometimes even medical leave to receive inpatient psychiatric care. I needed permission to come in when I could, do as much work as I could, and step away when my health demanded. These conditions were out of my control and not remotely related to my work ethic or dedication to the job.
Jobs and careers that will allow for my erratic schedule of wellness doubtlessly exist, but the problem arises when you filter those jobs down to exclude education requirements, experience requirements, internal hiring processes, appointments based on seniority or tenure – in other words, when you restrict the search to entry level.
Again, the stress is the point in entry level jobs, because most businesses and organizations are structured as pyramid-shaped hierarchies that filter a massive number of employees out from their bottom levels to fill a scant handful of positions at the top. Where can accessibility for mental and chronic illness even fit into that structure?
Since March of this year, I’ve written for the Times Chronicle on a contract basis. There have been weeks where I have nothing to contribute because I’m too sick to sit up in bed and look at a screen, and weeks where I took on half the editorial copy workload to help cover a co-worker’s holiday. When I work, I’m paid – when I can’t, I’m not.
This sort of arrangement isn’t typical in journalism, where reporters tend to be salaried members of a newspaper or magazine’s staff and anyone who works outside of that structure is considered freelance. It’s also the exact arrangement I’ve been searching for since I was 22 years old and first received clearance to live an unemployed life well below the poverty line, but with guaranteed income.
Because this job isn’t out to break me, I can function within it in a way that benefits everyone and maximizes my overall productivity by keeping me below the stress level that will cause a complete breakdown of my mental and physical health.
I hope that our society’s vision of the ideal workplace structure can change enough in the future to allow for more positive outcomes like mine. Given the massive labour shortages being faced by employers across the country, this may be the perfect time to reconsider accessibility for the invisibly disabled.
