Exploring the right to work among persons with disabilities: The role of labor-oriented values.

BACKGROUND

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) assumes that persons with disabilities have similar rights, motivations to work and personal values as those without disabilities.

OBJECTIVE

The article examines the corroboration between this assumption and real-life facts to better understand the importance of labor-oriented values in people with disabilities.

METHODS

We tested the relationship between human values, employment and wages among Israelis with disabilities who cope with prejudice, negative attitudes and a lack of accessible workplaces in comparison to Israelis without disabilities.

RESULTS

We found that the effect of labor-oriented values on employment status is 70% higher among people with disabilities than among those without disabilities. Furthermore, persons with disabilities ranked power and achievement as important values related to employment, but these values were not included in the considerations of persons without disabilities.

CONCLUSIONS

These results highlight the importance of labor-oriented values for people with disabilities to overcome challenges in the labor market. Our findings suggest that rehabilitation policies would benefit from identifying personal human values of people with disabilities at an early stage of their career.