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.
As indicated above, I could suggest my own barriers:
Fitting in: I reckon one of the major issues is being accepted into the social structure in the workplace. The problem is, if you are not good at reading social situations, and not good at conveying the right social messages, you will have had a long term difficulty in developing the right social skills for the workplace. The way to remove this barrier might be not requiring the autistic worker to socialise. It wouldn't remove the problem entirely.
Trust: related to the above, if you misread others and give misleading signals, work colleagues will be unsure what you mean in situations, whether you are being "straight" with them or devious/misleading, and therefore whether they can trust you. Correspondingly the worker with autism may have trouble trusting colleagues, and may be confused by their suspicious reactions. This barrier might be eased by training of fellow workers in the communication difficulties experienced by people with autism, so they are more understanding. Perhaps other ways of settling differences of trust could be found.
Team working: for the above reasons it can be difficult being part of a team, but nowadays it is hard to avoid teamworking. This barrier might be alleviated if someione in the team acts as a mentor for the team member with autism.
Workplace humour: again people on the spectrum may be less well equipped to distinguish play from reality. The solution would be to ask colleagues to take account of that difficulty.
Management behaviour. It may be difficult for someone on the spectrum to adequately process management impatience with the workforce. Again a mentor would help the person with autism adjust to this.
Communication of tasks and task details. Devices that help prompt people on the spectrum through tasks are gradually becoming available, but a mentor could help, and in the meantime prompts could be set out in written form in a booklet the autistic person could use for reference.
Noisy environments, visually disturbing and other senses affected. The TUC suggestion was quieter workplaces and turning down bright lights, which isn't always possible. It would easier to provide the autistic person with concessions like wearing noise-reducing headphones, wearing protective or irlen glasses, being allowed a shorter exposure time.
Change in the workplace. This will affect people on the spectrum but can be alleviated by providing additional explanatory material in writing, and by a mentor, to help the autistic person re-adjust.
I could extend this, but I'd rather ask others to come up with more suggestions. We need to get a fuller picture.