[Challenges for Representatives of Employees with Severe Disabilities Amid the Legal Reforms Resulting from the...

Representatives of employees with severe disabilities play a key role in achieving inclusive working conditions. This has been taken into account by the Federal Participation Act and the rights of the representatives of employees with severe disabilities have been expanded. The aims of the present exploratory analysis are to clarify the modified legal status from the perspective of the representatives of employees with severe disabilities, to identify challenges in the practical application of the legal reforms and to reveal unconsidered needs. Considering that research on the implementation and evaluation of social legislation are core elements of rehabilitation research, this study intends to close the gap between legal implementation and practical application and aims to advance the process of a learning legislation.

Across Germany, a total of 1552 representatives of employees with severe disabilities were interviewed via online survey. The present analysis focuses on the answers regarding challenges for representatives of employees with severe disabilities. The answers were evaluated according to the content-structuring qualitative content analysis of Kuckartz and analysed with regard to the legal reforms resulting by the Federal Participation Act.

The Federal Participation Act is critically evaluated from the perspective of the representatives of employees with severe disabilities. The survey data demonstrate that the representatives of employees with severe disabilities consider parts of the legal reforms not to be comprehensive enough. Certain provisions, such as the consultation of deputies and the lowering of the exemption limit, are seen as not extensive enough and only affect the subgroup of representatives in large companies. Other rights, such as the right to information and consultation, do not include the possibility for sanctions in case of non-application of the law by the employer. The introduction of the invalidity clause regarding terminations is considered insufficient.

Although the rights of the representatives of employees with severe disabilities are being expanded by means of the Federal Participation Act, there are still challenges in the implementation, specification and binding nature of the individual reforms, which must be observed and further discussed in the sense of a learning legislation. The present results indicate that further involvement of the representatives of employees with severe disabilities is required in order to derive approaches for targeted optimisation of the application and the design of the legal reforms.