Laws for the Right to Work of Disabled People: The Italian Experience
In Europe people with disabilities face very low employment rates and are strongly linked to disability benefits. The flexicurity approach, that involves the combination of Active Labour Market Policies and social protection systems, is likely to have pos
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ope, people with disabilities face very low employment rates and are strongly linked to disability pension, with the overall effect of an increased risk of poverty (European Commission 2007a). Parodi and Sciulli (2008) show, for Italian data, that disability pensions do not compensate the potential incomes of people with disabilities; consequently, the risk of poverty for families with a person with a disability is higher than for families without a family member with a disability. People with disabilities, compared to ones without impairments, incur a higher probability of becoming poor and of encountering social exclusion and this probability increases if they are not employed (Shima et al. 2008). Hence, an important question to address is: how to increase the probability of finding employment for an individual with a disability? In Italy, Law 68 of March 12, 1999, aims at the regulation and promotion of the employment of persons with disabilities and has contributed significantly to the employment of people with disabilities and hence to their social inclusion (Orlando and Patrizio 2006). Law 68/1999 specifies that regions have the greatest responsibility in its application and, consequently, its successful implementation depends almost exclusively on regions’ actions and ability
M. Agovino (*) University of Naples “Parthenope”, Naples, Italy e-mail: [email protected] A. Rapposelli D’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Pescara, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 S. L. Fielden et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Disability at Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42966-9_5
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to efficiently coordinate the various actors (e.g., people with disabilities, employers, job centres, etc.) involved in the employment of individuals with disabilities in order to reach the matching between demand and supply of jobs for this group (Agovino and Rapposelli 2014). However, even if this law represents an important tool for the employment of people with disabilities, it is not enough. The unemployment problem for some people with disabilities is especially linked to their inability to allay health problems in the workplace. Italian data highlight the limits of Law 68/99 in guaranteeing jobs for people with disabilities especially in Southern Italy (Agovino and Rapposelli 2012). Therefore, measures are needed to support the economic policy of this law to reach the matching between demand and supply of jobs for those with disabilities. Flexicurity, used to refer to combinations of both labour market flexibility and high levels of social security, could be a valid measure to improve the degree of inclusion of disabled people in the labour market. Flexicurity represents a ‘third way’ strategy between the flexibility generally attributed to the Anglo-Saxon labour market and the strict job security characterizing Southern European countries, or between the flexibility of liberal market economies and the social safety nets of the traditional Sca
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