Disabled people stripped of dignity and equality in Scotland's public sector jobs

Elsewhere on this blog, you can read how research has exposed inescapable evidence of institutional racism in the culture and practices of Scotland's public sector, where in the over 488,000 jobs it takes to run Scotland we can find room for just 9,766 BME people.  Scotland is no big fan of giving Catholic people equality either.  Even though Catholic people make up over 15% of Scotland's population, we can find room for just over 6% of people who are Catholic in that ocean of 488,000+ jobs.  

Politicians in Scotland regularly chastise Westminster for cutting welfare benefits, on which many disabled people rely to attain a sense of independent living.  It is of course possible to argue that being in work for many disabled people would not only provide the financial means to live independently, but would also provide the human dignity of having the opportunity to be seen to be an active contributor to shaping and forming what we call society, and not being marginalised and rarely heard in that work.

There can be little if any influence exerted by Westminster over the employment cultures and practices of the public sector organisations which use over 488,000 jobs to run Scotland and deliver much-needed services.  Scotland has even adopted its own legislation on just how the public sector should go about identifying and eliminating discrimination in jobs and in services, rightly claiming to be much more progressive than the lightweight equivalent used in England. All of this should mean that disabled people are increasingly being brought in from the margins, barriers to work dismantled, and taking up more and more of the 488,000+ jobs in the public sector.

The table below, based on data published by all these public bodies themselves, suggests both governments are equally good at the rhetoric of what will be, maybe, in the future, just not today, and equally bad at making equality a reality for disabled people.  With Scotland having around 20% of the population having a disability, Scotland's fabled tolerant, barrier-free, public sector where all too often some homespun couthy kailyard quote from Burns takes the place of solid, hard-nosed, well-thought through public sector policy, has only managed to find room for 1.8% of disabled people in that ocean of 488,000+ public sector jobs.