translated from Spanish: The reality of the employment inclusion of people with disabilities in Chile

More than two years after the enactment of the labour inclusion law, Fundación ConTrabajo carried out an Evolution Report of Law 21.015 which concludes that as of June of this year the country registers 33.1.% compliance in contracts, implying that almost 40 thousand people with disabilities have not joined the labour market.
Figures obtained from the SII show that companies with 100 or more workers, which are required to reserve 1% of their endowment to persons with disabilities, would open up 58,760 places of work. However, the maximum number of persons with contracts registered with the Directorate of Labour is 23,774, which was reduced to 19,473 as of June 30 of this year.
This low compliance rate precedes the current economic crisis and has been a sustained trend over time since the implementation of the regulations in April 2018. Undoubtedly, the increase in unemployment as a result of the pandemic has had a strong impact on the disabled population: between March and August there are no new hires and, on the contrary, there is a progressive increase in disengagements.
In Chile, 20% of the population has disabilities (ENDISC, 2015) and half of them, or 1 million,400,000 people, belong to the country’s two poorest quintiles, which currently record the lowest employment rates (35% versus 58.9% of the most affluent quintile), according to the latest report of the Catholic University’s Center for Longitudinal Surveys and Studies.
Unemployment hits people in socioeconomic vulnerability more strongly, even more so if they have a disability. It is a population with barriers to access to regular education, without homologation of studies in special education, and therefore with a lower qualification when looking for employment.
The analysis also shows that Law 21.015 has not been sufficient to promote the entry into the labour market of persons with disabilities, as of the 11,982 companies that should carry out inclusions, only 32% have complied with the regulations.
It is time to work together, leading to measures that prevent the recruitment rate from descreing further as a result of the pandemic, and long-term measures are taken to sustainly promote labour inclusions.
It is urgent that, within the measures proposed for economic revival, people with disabilities, the largest vulnerable collective in our country, be incorporated.
The Evolution of Law 21.015 report is available at www.fundacioncontrabajo.cl

Original source in Spanish