Disabilities in technical theatre

[gareth]

If I may float a potentially controversial point for a moment ...

 

Quite often (usually in larger organisations) one sees job descriptions indicating that applications from people with disabilities are welcomed - encouraged, even - and that applicants with disabilities are guaranteed an interview if they appear to meet the criteria defined by the job description, person specification, etc. Now, how can that be allowed? Can employers select or reject candidates for interview on the basis of their physical or mental ability or disability? If they have two applicants who are possibilities for the interview shortlist, one of whom has excellent credentials and is not disabled, the other of whom has credentials which are not quite as good (but still meet the criteria for the post) but who has a disability of some sort, and the less-qualified (but disabled) candidate gets an interview while the other one doesn't, is the rejected candidate allowed to cry "foul" on the grounds of discrimination? To my mind, vacancies should be filled by the best person for the job, regardless of whether or not they're disabled, and without any allowance being given to some sort of PC quota-filling.

[Freddie]

I believe the short answer is that its not allowed, as its "positive discrimination". e.g. "We have an office full of men, so lets employ a woman for the next vacancy".

[Ynot]

I believe the short answer is that its not allowed, as its "positive discrimination". e.g. "We have an office full of men, so lets employ a woman for the next vacancy".

Ah, but it IS most certainly happening!

That's precisely what happens and we see the reports (assuming the press can be believed... :D).

 

"There was a drive this month to increase the number of ethnic oficers recruited to the police force"...

 

QED

[Jivemaster]

It is happening all the time the white able bodied male is now being discriminated against for being just that.

 

The Met Police were reprimanded for not considering a white able bodied applicant because they had an ethnic diversity expansion plan!

 

People can still advertise jobs in specialist media The Voice and Eastern Eye come to mind as newspapers dedicated to other ethnic groups.

 

Small companies need multiskilled people and may not have vacancies for people with limited ability.

 

Big companies have ethnic monitoring and disabled recruiting plans they have to follow. I would never wish disability on anyone BUT if you have a recognised condition big companies will actually prefer you over someone else who can do the job simply because you tick more boxes for them.

[AndrewR]

My understanding of the law (which is far from comprehensive I'm sure) is that...

 

Your disability can only be taken into consideration if it prevents you from doing the job.

 

You wouldn't interview a deaf applicant for a sound job (although I would, just to see how good his mixing was...)

Ok, not a great example, but you get the point. Some people simply cannot do some things due to their disability.

 

The reason for any form of 'positive discrimination' (a horrible phrase) is fear of litigation, or government policy.

 

Basically your disabilty is only relevant if it prevents you from being able to carry out key job requirements. Any of you who have seen a RCCL job description will understand how this can be made clear, they list in great detail all the things you might do. Including things like crawling along beams, through small spaces, telling wire colours apart, etc etc.

 

I have heard of some people not actually putting down their disability on an application form, betting it will increase their chance of interview.

 

And if the ethnic thing bothers you, don't fill it in! or put something random... I occasionaly put down other, just to see if people ask :D

[J Pearce]

You wouldn't interview a deaf applicant for a sound job (although I would, just to see how good his mixing was...)

 

Define deaf.

I know a number of people who wear hearing aids in one or both ears, yet mix just as well as (and in a few cases better than) most people with full hearing ability.

[paulears]

My nephew got through the interview for an electrical/mechanical offshore maritime apprenticeship scheme. Then they discovered at the medical he was green/red colour blind. Big panic. Then the firm announced that in the past this had happened before, and they'd just concentrate on a mechanical scheme but any electrics work was out. Nice to see common sense being used from time to time.

[AndrewR]

You wouldn't interview a deaf applicant for a sound job (although I would, just to see how good his mixing was...)

 

Define deaf.

I know a number of people who wear hearing aids in one or both ears, yet mix just as well as (and in a few cases better than) most people with full hearing ability.

 

 

Deaf, as opposed to hearing impared... i.e. Unable to hear, at all.

[JimWebber]

If I may float a potentially controversial point for a moment ...

 

Quite often (usually in larger organisations) one sees job descriptions indicating that applications from people with disabilities are welcomed - encouraged, even - and that applicants with disabilities are guaranteed an interview if they appear to meet the criteria defined by the job description, person specification, etc. Now, how can that be allowed? Can employers select or reject candidates for interview on the basis of their physical or mental ability or disability? If they have two applicants who are possibilities for the interview shortlist, one of whom has excellent credentials and is not disabled, the other of whom has credentials which are not quite as good (but still meet the criteria for the post) but who has a disability of some sort, and the less-qualified (but disabled) candidate gets an interview while the other one doesn't, is the rejected candidate allowed to cry "foul" on the grounds of discrimination? To my mind, vacancies should be filled by the best person for the job, regardless of whether or not they're disabled, and without any allowance being given to some sort of PC quota-filling.

 

(My Bold)

 

 

Yep, been there seen it! The Civil Service has a "Guaranteed Interview Scheme" for disabled candidates - During one of our bi-annual "Equality and Diversity Refreshers" I raised exactly your point with the instructor.

 

Apparently despite my arguments, it is not "Positive Discrimination" - Which Freddie, you are quite right is illegal!

 

During my arguments, I was made to look like some kind of Nazi Bigot... When I dared to suggest that the question "Do you consider yourself to have a disability?" be left off the application form, so as nobody knew the applicants status.... Well, it appears that common sense has been outlawed too!

 

Jim

[Tomo]

When I dared to suggest that the question "Do you consider yourself to have a disability?" be left off the application form, so as nobody knew the applicants status

That is one of my pet hates.

 

The best way to ensure discrimination doesn't happen at the pre-selection stage is for NOBODY to know details about an applicant that could be used to unfairly discriminate.

 

So don't ask for age, sex, sexual orientation, race (I hate that word), religion, background, disabilties or anything like that.

 

(Although the age one is going to be difficult - even if you miss out the year you took your A-Levels, the GCSE/O-Level divide is going to be there, as is the A/A2 level)

 

If the company don't know, they can't be swayed by it.

The "It's on a separate page" argument is rubbish - if the information exists, it will occasionally end up in the wrong place.

 

The sane way to handle disability is to ask is they have any special requirements when you offer the interview, and not before.

 

For monitoring, keep anonymised records (ie a bit of paper with the job title, and attributes to monitor but no names or anything else) of the 'possible discriminatory details' of all applicants offered interview.

 

That way it becomes apparent if the interviewer is biased - and nobody else CAN be because they don't know.

[Bryson]

The Age thing is actually a very, very stupid thing to leave off the form, for some jobs. I've just been sorting applications for a Cinema Projectionist. One of the applicants was 16 years old, which would mean that she couldn't have shown 18 certificate films. However, the Council's forms deliberately omit the age category, so the fact that she was 16 would have gone unnoticed if it weren't for the fact that she volunteered the information in the personal statement. Then we would have wasted her time and ours by inviting her in for an interview for a job that she could not do.

 

A shame really - the application was pretty good - maybe she saw my advice thread on here!

 

I always list my religon as "Druid" on application forms, for comedy purposes. I do think that Atheists should be permitted to name a number of non-holy days that they don't want to work. I'd choose my Birthday, for a start...

[Ynot]

The best way to ensure discrimination doesn't happen at the pre-selection stage is for NOBODY to know details about an applicant that could be used to unfairly discriminate.

 

So don't ask for age, sex, sexual orientation, race (I hate that word), religion, background, disabilties or anything like that.

Actually, in many ways I'd have to disagree with that...

 

There will be circumstances for a wide range of jobs where the need to know some of these would be essential!

 

Age - as per the example from Bryson above

Sex - Staff at an all-female health club would be more than justified in looking only for women

Orientation - possibly a tricky one, but maybe a gay bar only wanted gay staff...

Race - definitely a tricky one, but again, a chinese restaurant may decide that they wanted ALL of their waiters to BE chinese because that's the business they're in. Another might be putting a Polish speaking help-desk person into a customer service group which sits firmly in a 100% English speaking community.

Religion - Theoretically (theologically??) tricky, but may actually be simple. No point in a Roman Catholic applying for a post as leader of a moslem community centre...

Background - not sure on this one what 'background' would mean...

Disabilities - we've already covered this, but a wheelchair bound applicant shouldn't even be considering a serious application for a rigger's job.

 

In EVERY case, the people advertising the positions available should, yes, use proper common sense in a) their adverts, b) their forms to be filled out and c) their interview methods. Whilst I agree that in the past there has been way too much discrimination in some areas, these days we most certainly HAVE gone too far in the opposite direction - ie positive discrimination - and this has only been very thinly veiled in some cases.

 

As one of the people on this forum who's been responsible over the years for writing adverts, vetting CV's and interviewing applicants (in a day-job situation with a global comms company) I think I can speak with some experience and say that a lot of the time there is a need to cull applications quite severely before you get to the interviews - I once was involved in the task to reduce 75 applications to a max of 10 we were to invite to interview, and that was tough. Especially as we had to write to EACH of the rejects explaining why they'd failed to get through. And some of those failed simply because whilst they were qualified for the post on offer, their CV's were maybe too loose, or the ones who got through were MORE qualified, or (dare I say it) had more experience.

We didn't at that stage look at many of the categories above when making those decisions, BUT I do know of one instance (I wasn't directly involved) where more Asian candidates were put through to interview (by a mixed panel) simply because the vast majority of the team they'd be working with were already Asian, and it was felt that the team would benefit from a similar background there. Some qualified non-Asians were still put through, not as a 'token' but based on their CV's.

I don't see that in any way racially discriminate, more a practical consideration.

 

At the end of the day, there must be some mechanism by which candidates can be filtered - the question is how best to use the information available in a fair and equal manner, and that depends entirely on each individual situation.

[paulears]

Have you noticed that it isn't fairly applied. If you are in a MacDonalds where the manager is of an ethnic minority, then the vast proportion of the staff are too. My local kebabery have all Greek staff, most Italian restaurants have Italian staff, with India restaurants rarely having non-indians, my favourite Thai has one non-Thai bloke, and he's useless. We have mainly gay staff in the box office. My friend, who's a 35 year old ginger, short dancer used to lie about her age at auditions, but now finds the jobs advertise the possibility of a european tour - so bring your passports. In view of this open abuse of the equal ops rules, most of the situations we're talking about are like many responses to H&S issues - over the top!

[Ynot]

Have you noticed that it isn't fairly applied. If you are in a MacDonalds where the manager is of an ethnic minority, then the vast proportion of the staff are too. My local kebabery have all Greek staff, most Italian restaurants have Italian staff, with India restaurants rarely having non-indians, my favourite Thai has one non-Thai bloke, and he's useless. We have mainly gay staff in the box office. My friend, who's a 35 year old ginger, short dancer used to lie about her age at auditions, but now finds the jobs advertise the possibility of a european tour - so bring your passports. In view of this open abuse of the equal ops rules, most of the situations we're talking about are like many responses to H&S issues - over the top!

Hmmm... ©

I can understand (and to be honest, accept) the 'restricted ethnicity of employees in a restaurant serving Indian, Thai or Greek food, as there are pretty good reasons why they would be better suited to the roles - however, MacDonalds isn't really an ethnic chain so could easily say that they are the ones in that little group who could most likely be successfully challenged.

 

The tag about the possibility of European travel is a nice touch (on the part of the employer :D). You raise an interesting thought there, though - age in some cases can be very important - like the 16 yr old potential projectionist. Without a clearly stated age on the paperwork, there's theoretically nothing to stop applicants lying to get a job they may not be suited for in other areas. A 15 yr old dancer who looks, say, late teens early 20's (and there are many who could pass as such) could get a job in the 'big wide world' in situations that really should be left for those over 18's.

 

Oh - and what on earth is wrong with having happy box office staff?????

:(

 

(But serously yes - I do agree that everything these days, be it political correctness, H & S and employment laws etc are WAY OTT).

[djw1981]

I can see why you might want the chef to have a good (native?) experience fo teh cuisine, but do the waiters, bar staff etc need to?