Photo: Jörgen Rönn.
Samhall – sheltered or outmoded?
Publicerat 27 Nov, 2006
”Hopelessly behind the times“. ”The company has had it far too good for far too long“. ”Is its existence justified? Not really, well perhaps, but only if it is slimmed right down and given a proper facelift.“ Samhall, a State-owned company that offers sheltered employment to the disabled, has been widely criticised in many quarters over the years, for example in a recent government enquiry.
”We are open to major changes,“ says the company’s Information Director, Anna-Karin Hedlund, ”and to competition.“
Sheltered employment, i.e. a system that provides jobs that also comprise rehabilitation, has been available in Sweden since the 1960s. These are jobs for people with an occupational disability.
Initially, several players provided sheltered employment, but in the 1980s Samhall AB was given primary responsibility for this by the government. The State contributes SEK 4 billion per year, which represents 50 per cent of Samhall's total turnover.
Samhall employs approximately 21 000 disabled people at 250 locations around the country. They earn an average of SEK 17 000 per month. Originally, Samhall was largely an industrial company, but the focus is now on services. The employees supply everything from lorry parts to office cleaning - at market prices.
"Supplying to customers lies at the core of the company's activities," says Anna-Karin Hedlund. "Our employees can say with pride: "We have done this in the face of fierce competition with other companies" and this provides real job satisfaction. Our customers often note how happy and enthusiastic our employees are. It adds something special, an extra dimension."
Samhall AB's mission is to "create meaningful and developing jobs for the disabled" while acting as a commercial company that produces goods and services. Has it succeeded? What do external experts say?
The researcher Mikael Holmqvist claims that Samhall creates occupational disability by training people to adopt a certain social role, a stigmatising role in which individuals are identified in terms of their capacity for work, not in terms of what they can actually do.
Jan Rydh, who previously conducted a Government enquiry, is also critical.
"People are sent to Samhall, where the point of departure is what the individual cannot do, instead of asking: "What do you want to do with your life?" Samhall is a company that must break even and this has taken over at the expense of the needs of the individual."
One of the many proposals in Jan Rydh's enquiry, "Inte bara Samhall" (Not Just Samhall), which was presented in 2003 (link), is that the company should begin by identifying every individual employee's goals, desires and needs and then base its activities on these in practice.
"We have exactly the same view as Jan Rydh in this respect, that we should base our work on the skills and abilities of the individual," says Anna-Karin Hedlund. "Samhall is now living in the wake of the enquiry; we have noted the criticism and have made progress. How successful we are depends to a large extent on our management expertise. The people in charge of working groups are specially trained to be sensitive to individual differences and needs. They provide coaching and encouragement where necessary and can give people other jobs when they want them."
The level of education among the disabled employees is generally low although there are exceptions, for example a group of teachers in Härnösand. The average age at Samhall is high, employees between 45 - 54 constitute the largest group. 46 per cent of the employees are women. It has become more common for the people here to have both physical and mental disabilities.
"It happens that employees have to start from the beginning again when they have been ill or on holiday," says Anna-Karin Hedlund. "They may, for example, have to get used to catching the bus to Samhall again and to managing to get up in the morning; some people find this difficult. In such cases the supervisors can go to their homes and help. If someone is feeling particularly fragile at some point we can double our manning levels, and this makes us unique as a company."
But people get stuck at Samhall, according to Jan Rydh. It takes far too long for most of them to make it to the regular labour market, if they ever do. He would therefore like to see the introduction of a public scheme for sheltered employment (the ASA scheme) in which many employers other than Samhall would be able to offer sheltered employment with the help of support from the State. This would also enable Samhall to slim down and concentrate on the people who really need to be there and to give them more guidance, job training and education where necessary.
"When the enquiry was presented in 2003 all the parties were full of praise, but not a lot happened after that," says Jan Rydh. "The whole thing seems to have got caught up in a discussion about budgets."
Anna-Karin Hedlund confirms that the staff turnover at Samhall is too low, that many people still remain there too long. In recent years, Samhall has tried to get more women out onto the regular labour market than previously, but without any real success.
However, Samhall is meeting the target set by the previous government, i.e. that five per cent of the employees should enter the regular labour market. This corresponds to around 1 000 people per year.
"But if the new government thinks that we should have a higher target we should be able to meet that target too. In some parts of our operations, for example in our temporary employment agencies, we are reaching figures of 8 or 9 per cent. We are open to major changes and to competition," says Anna-Karin Hedlund.
What will happen in this respect is a question for the new government.
| Marie Eriksson marie@stockholmskulturbyra.se |
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