Published on 12, July, 2020
In May last year the TUC launched its guide to employment of people on the autistic spectrum. It was written for them by Janine Booth who runs autism in the workplace training events for the Workers' Educational association.
This is a different route into the problem from the mainly NAS led approach, the trades union perspective. It is directed at trade union officers who come across autism issues in the workplace, and therefore might potentially have a strong influence on how peple at work treat autistic spectrum colleagues.
It starts off by establishing a Social Model of Disability perspective (my pet hate from an educational point of view - I don't think this works for autism). The social model looks at barriers in the work environment which clash with autistic impairment. All you have to do it seems is make some environmental and material adjustments and then people on the autistic spectrum will have the same chances as everyone else. Simples.....
It then explains the Triad of Impairment. There's a long section with lots of examples of thinking literally. On executive function - this is the set of abilities that enable people to translate motivation into action. START doing someting, CHANGE what you are doing, STOP doing something once started, and Managing Time. Then Motor Function, Sensory Sensitivity, Sensory Overload, two-line description each. This leads to distress, meltdowns sometimes, and stimming.
Then the usual platitudes debunking the mythology - behaviour is a product of distress, difference not disability, apparently 60-70 percent of people on the autistic spectrum have a learning disability, many people with autism do not want to be cured. - you know all this stuff.
The great mystery is the lack of references - what is all this based on? All they provide are 6 websites - the all party paliamentary group, autism europe, the autism hub, autistic uk, DANDA and NAS. An autism timeline in an appendix reaches 2013 without mentioning the Autism Act or Leading Rewarding and Fulfilling Lives... The last UK contribution was the formation of the All Party Parliamentary Group in 2000.
In other words - lets not bother doing this properly - lets just package together a lot of opinionated rubbish and that's good enough for the TUC.
To the TUC: - "Most Autistic people can work, including in normal (whatever that may mean) workplaces"
"People with autism have various means of communication - some are more verbal than others"
They list a lot of reasons why workplaces create difficulties for autistic workers: discrimination, bullying, lack of communication and support, preventing an autistic person carrying out duties or using equipment when there is no valid reason to do so. Also lower pay, imposition of new arrangements at work, working conditions in the past, autistic workers are more likely to have periods without work, decreased self confidence, work environments, bossy managers, disruption of routines, contracting out, and latterly "expecting people to abide by social rules without ever specifying what they are", "making judgements about a worker's social interaction" " issues with assessment and/or pronotional processes".
Now those last three I'd say were priority ones. Most of the preceding material is standard TUC issues, discussed at length. When we get down to these three, we are on unexplained one-liners. They are followed by more and repetitive one-liners. They are just adding on things they've read somewhere but dont understand. Right at the bottom of this long list comes "sensory issues, eg noise, light, smell".
There follows a section on workers with autistic dependents. It is again standard trade union stuff.
What they propose is, even without knowing staff might have autism, make the work-place more autism friendly. Provide a relaxation space, changes to working practices to be negoiated with the union, occupational health and managemnent training about autism, time off for trade union representatives to attend training, all instructions and policies to be written clearly, anti-harrassment, time off.
That's the solution apparently - social model, remove the "barriers" and it will all be hunky dorey. There's some standard stuff about politically correct language and hate crime. Then some stuff about the impact of auterity and autism in parliament, which ends with APPG in 2000. Nothing about the Autism Act. However the Autism Act is mentioned under a section on the law.
My problem with this document is there is no real undderstanding of autism. There's no sign of any effort to understand autism. Just the usual social model tripe - make a few wee anticipatory adjustments - nothing to autism really.
The whole document is a disgrace. I'm not anti-union. I was in a union most of my life and even for a while a rep. But this document is a sham. The TUC should be thoroyughly ashamed. They've not taken autism seriously, merely adapted autism to a general moan about workplace conditions for all employees, which is not fair.
I think you are right, it is about interpretation. The problem is that the prioritised interpretation lies with the able community.
If I could quote Christine Breakey in "The Autism Spectrum and Further Education - A Guide to Good Practice" (JKP 2006) page 26:
"Viewing autism through the social model challenges the dominant view of autism. It shifts the focus from the indivuidual and locates the 'problem' within society and its organizations. According to this model, autistic people are no longer viewed as 'problematic' or 'challenging' but as experiencing problems or difficulties which are caused and challenged by society's lack of provision and the creation of barriers within society. This model challenges the prejudice and discrimination which autistic people experience on a daily basis and leads to a fundamental need to shift our professional focus and approach from one which seeks to normalize and teach the autistic person to 'pretend to be normal', to one which examines and addresses the barriers in the organizations in which we work, so that they become more accessible and inclusive for autistic people".
First as you'll see the 'individual' is confined within the medical model - far from there being any sense of the disabled person having human rights and a right to full participation, this is about society changing to remove perceived barriers.
I don't see any sign of the barriers being removed for people with autism, whether in the workplace of education. We are still being treated under the medical model. Part of the problem, as I've said earlier, is that no-one understands autism enough to define the barriers that need removing, or provide aids or prosthetics. Society isn't making any allowances for us, nor attempting to remove barriers. It expects us to change.
The worrying other side to this is the way able people restrict what that societal adjustment means. It infuriated me so often in education to find that an able person could get an extension for an assignment for any reasonable excuse, but it was argued that a disabled person couldn't have an extension because provisions had been made elsewhere, and it would be giving disabled people an unfair advantage to give them more help.
I'm not a fan of Breakey's book, but I hold onto it because it is so widely used by educational professionals. This is what she has to say about this - page 27.
"Our behaviour is something we all have to manage, monitor, and control, all of the time. It is affected by outside conditions, but ultimately, we are expected to take full responsibility for our own actions. Because of this, it is argued that it is not always possible to effectively remove all social barriers which affect all autistic people, particularly because of the unique and individual nature of the condition. When this is argued, then the onus is once again put onto the autistic person to 'fit-in' and conform, to some degree. This means 'act normal'. Conformity is always an extremely controversial area which is accompanied by massive ethical dilemmas... but it is something which we are all expected to do, in every situation we experience, without being aware of it. Autistic 'normality' however is quite different to neuro-typical 'normality' and what we are actually asking the autistic person to do is to conform to neuro-typical 'normality'. Clearly, this is a situation which cannot be resolved easily and there is a need for greater understanding and flexibility"
The upshot of this is the social model makes some adjustments - so-called 'reasonable adjustments', but no more than that. It stops theoretically when sufficient barriers have been removed for the disabled person to have a fair chance on a 'level playing field'. But autism is too complex and difficult, so the social model cannot be applied to autism.
Nor is there much sign of society striving "for greater understanding and flexibility" with regard to the needs of people with autism, in spite of the Autism Act, Leading Rewarding and Fulfilling Lives and other so-called progress.
Which is why I'm so ballistically angry with the TUC. If they had researched this properly they would have realised the social model doesn't work for people on the autistic spectrum. Its just what you'd expect from a politically driven organisation whose priority isn't helping the disabled but challenging employers. The TUC doesn't care a jot about people with autism.
It is a pity the TUC will probably not read this diatribe.