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December 6 2004 - Canadians with disabilities have a right to work and use their skills and knowledge to earn a living, says Marie Clarke Walker, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress. She has urged the federal government to use the opportunity of its upcoming review of Canada's labour laws to make the changes necessary to ensure equal and productive participation of Canadians with disabilities in the workplace.

"The unemployment rates for workers with disabilities remain unacceptably high, which is why so many people with disabilities live in poverty. It isn't because there are no jobs available and certainly isn't because people with disabilities can't do the jobs. It's because too many workplaces remain inaccessible and too few see any reason to change," she says.

Clarke Walker says that the review of Canada's labour code provides a chance to make the country's workplaces open and available to all workers with the ability to get the job done, adding the duty to accommodate must go beyond physical accessibility. She believes that workplace practices - ranging from hiring and promotion to evaluation and individual accommodation (often costing very little, in comparison to the value of the work itself) need to be brought into the 21st century.

"It wasn't so long ago that women were denied work because employers didn't want to build a different washroom or have to deal with pregnancy or child care. Discrimination on the basis of mental or physical disability is no less unconstitutional than discrimination on the basis of gender. There's no place for this in Canada anymore," says Clarke Walker.

Sharon Hambleton, Canadian Labour Congress Vice-President representing workers with disabilities, says that Canada's unions already make a difference in people's lives. She argues that governments and employers should follow the unions' lead. The unions launched a campaign three years ago to raise awareness of the barriers blocking full participation as union members to persons with disabilities.

"Opportunities are opening up for workers with disabilities to participate at all levels of union activity, which means issues of accommodation and accessibility are finding their way to the bargaining table. Workplaces are being changed for the better, but unions cannot do this by themselves. Modernizing our labour code would certainly help," says Hambleton.

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