Using Dorothy Smith’s institutional ethnographic approach to doing research, I
explore through interviews with disabled workers how workplace accommodation
policies, such as the New Policy on the Duty to Accommodate Employees with
Disabilities in the Federal Public Service and the Department of Fearless Advice’s
Workplace Accommodation policy, work. Starting from the standpoint of disabled
employees, I map out what happens when a disabled federal public service employee
activates one of these policies. I also show that the audit-based compliance evaluation
process developed by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to safeguard government
Departments/Agencies against systemic discrimination actually facilitates discrimination.
These textually-mediated ruling relations situate the problems that disabled workers
encounter in the workplace in their biological makeup, rather than in the Government of
Canada’s unwillingness to transform their workplaces to meet the needs of all types of
workers, as legislated by the Eldridge and Meiorin Supreme Court of Canada decisions. I
show, further, that the on-line recruitment process used to select employees into the
federal public service encodes normality, thereby discriminating against disabled
workers. I also demonstrate that, although federal public service accommodation policies
accomplish the legal obligation of the employer not to discriminate against disabled
workers, the individualization of accommodations forces disabled workers to take it upon
themselves to find ways and means in which to fit into workplaces that have not been
designed to meet their needs. I conclude by proposing that in order to change this
situation and to counteract the unprecedented number of human rights complaints that
have been brought against the Government of Canada for discrimination on the prohibited ground of disability, disabled workers need to follow in the militant footsteps
of Canadian First Nations peoples. / Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:UNB.1882/1086 |
| Date | 01 October 2011 |
| Creators | Deveau, Jean Louis |
| Contributors | University of New Brunswick, Interdisciplinary Studies, Harrison, D. |
| Publisher | Fredericton: University of New Brunswick |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
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