Let’s Get to Work: Reimagining Disability Inclusive Employment Policy The Burton Blatt Institute

Tune in for a conversation about research into long COVID with Dr. Vidya Sundar, Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at the University of New Hampshire, and Debra Brucker, Associate Professor, Institute on Disability, at the University of New Hampshire.

This episode features a conversation with Sharon Rennert, Senior Attorney Advisor for EEOC about long COVID and disability employment policy. 

This episode features a conversation with Yana Rodgers, Professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University and Jennifer Cohen, Assistant Professor of Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University about accommodations in the era of long COVID. 

Tune in for a conversation about advocating for COVID long haulers, with Andrew Wylam, President and co-founder of Pandemic Patients.

It is safe to say that the shift to remote work during the pandemic has transformed the outlook of disability employment not just for the near future but for years to come. Above all, the emphasis on telework for the general workforce has deconstructed the notions that led many employers to hesitate to provide workers with opportunities to work remotely, Mason Ameri, associate professor at the Rutgers University Business School, said.
In this episode, Mason discusses the future of work, particularly relating to telework and what it means for people with disabilities. He reflects on the importance of the workforce returning to the mindset of the early 2000s, when employers embraced the mindset of “so long as you’re productive, who cares where you work from or for how long,” which changed when the economic recession began and employers began demanding in-person work and people with disabilities were working remotely at higher rates compared to nondisabled people. When the pandemic hit and the workforce went remote in 2020, however, the trend was flipped and a major inequity in occupational distribution was uncovered, Mason cites.
At the same time, this could lead to challenges for people with disabilities. Mason fears that remote work will become the default way employers will accommodate people with disabilities, leading them to be somewhat excluded from the workplace. If employees with disabilities are not visible in the workplace, then they may miss out on developing relationships that often initiate opportunities for promotions. He shares his other concerns with the future of work, whether the strategic and sometimes misleading approaches to initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion or the lack of investment in students with disabilities in the STEM fields and beyond.

Disability inclusion in apprenticeships has long been lacking, but in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicholas Wyman, executive director of the Institute for Workforce Skills and Innovation, sees an opportunity to change that.
Apprenticeships are grounded in the same experiential learning that many with disabilities benefit from, but have historically excluded disabled people, particularly those with significant disabilities. It is essential to disrupt and reverse this trend, and coming off a pandemic that altered the entire workforce, employers have an opportunity to reevaluate hiring practices in apprenticeship programs and beyond.
Wyman discusses the importance of investment, at local, state, national and even international levels of government, in apprenticeships, especially as it relates to people with disabilities. He discusses structural and attitudinal barriers that have historically prevented people with disabilities from participating in apprenticeships and argues that additional investment is necessary and shares his experience with learning of the impact that apprenticeships can have for individuals with disabilities and the disability community collectively. He highlights that apprenticeships can not only help alleviate the disability employment gap, but they can also help individuals with disabilities find meaning in their lives from a more universal perspective. In doing so, he describes the constant emphasis on employee background and how it hinders the opportunities people with disabilities have for employment more than it ensures applicants have the skills they need for jobs, even within apprenticeship programs.
These are reasons and opportunities for the government to improve its investment in apprenticeships, he says. However, improvement will require changes and a recognition of the role apprenticeships could play across society and the approach other nations, including Switzerland and Germany, take. Such changes would make a difference in addressing the disability employment gap, but they won’t happen if the US continues its “program approach,” where individual programs are arranged in different directions. Wyman discusses how there needs to be more of a systematic, unified approach to ensure apprenticeships and the impacts that would have on the disability community are widespread and long lasting.