In Finland, where I live, we have this thing called avotyö. A direct translation to that would be open work. I never really knew about its existence until I took a course called Disability in the Finnish society where we discussed its purpose and disadvantages. Open work is meant for people with developmental disabilities. The social services help them find a job that they go to but it’s just not called a job. The disabled person contributes to the job according to their abilities. They usually work somewhat shorter hours than others at that same workplace would. If they can, they partake in everything any worker would but they may also not do some tasks they find challenging. In this case, those tasks are usually replaced with other tasks better suited to the person’s abilities.
People who do open work do not sign an employment contract because they are not considered to be employees. This leaves them vulnerable for exploitation because they don’t have a contract to prove for example what tasks they are expected to perform. Because the people doing open work are not considered employees, they do not receive benefits such as paid vacation. They can also be fired from the job without any notice, unlike regular employees. They do get paid, but the pay is MAXIMUM 12 euros… per day. That is 13,5 US dollars daily. And like I said, it is the maximum pay they can receive, the minimum is 0 euros. Zero. Nothing. And even if they do receive the maximum of 12 euros, it barely covers the price of lunch they have at work. Basically even in the best-case scenario, the open worker is left with nothing after a day of work.
Is this legal, you may ask? Apparently, it is since it’s still going on in Finland. WHY is this legal?? I have no idea. In my opinion, it absolutely should not be. The purpose of open work is to get disabled people to work since they usually have a hard time finding work because of prejudiced employers. It’s great that social services help with this but once the disabled person finds a job, they should absolutely be paid just like all other employees. If they work shorter hours, they should still get paid for those hours. The system we have now basically uses disabled people as free labour and that is just horrible.
I used to work somewhere where there were two open work employees. I only realised much later that they were doing open work because, at the time, I didn’t even know what it was. The job was a traffic park for children. It involved giving children lectures about traffic rules and then watching over them as they rode bikes or drove pedal cars. Neither of the open workers gave lectures but that did not mean they just stood idle. They were both really good at fixing stuff so they would fix broken bikes and pedal cars and then join the rest of us to supervise the kids. Yes, sometimes one of them needed to be alone and rest for a while but that isn’t a bad thing, it just kept them functional during the day. Both open workers worked for 6 hours per day whereas the rest of us worked for 8 but during those 6 hours, they did just as much as anyone else and were just as important. Yet, they didn’t get paid almost at all.
I do not know if open work is something that is done in a lot of countries. I recommend you research the topic and see if your country treats developmentally disabled people as badly as mine. And if they do, make a difference. Post on social media, write your representative and just support disabled people in any way you can in the fight for their rights. Open work is modern slavery and should not be tolerated. It is time we see disabled people as people deserving of rights just like everyone else.