Behindertenwesen#
Disabled Persons, Legal Status of: The legal position of the disabled in the Austrian legal system is determined by a great number of legal regulations at provincial as well as at federal level. The reason for the fragmentation of this field of law is that the Austrian Constitution does not assign competences for the concerns of disabled persons. This is also one reason why no uniform concept has been defined describing disability as a basis for rights, duties and (social) benefits.
Concerns of disabled persons in the context of social law are dealt
with by the provincial authorities either in the framework of general
public assistance, or within separate welfare acts for disabled or
blind persons. According to these regulations, disabled people are
generally entitled to payments in kind, such as medical aid,
institutional care, orthopaedic care, occupational therapy and
placement in a Sheltered Workshop. However, these entitlements are
only of a subsidiary nature, i.e. they may only be claimed if the
disabled person has no title to help arising from other legal
provisions and cannot, as may be the case in isolated cases, achieve a
reasonable degree of self-sufficiency.
The granting of attendance allowances for persons needing care was
standardised at the federal level in the Federal Attendance Allowance
Act (BPGG, Federal Law Gazette 1993/110), which entered into force on
July 1, 1993. Up to that date, direct payments based on various
sources of law had been made at provincial and federal level. Payments
were standardised in order to effectively guarantee care and
assistance in cases of persistent need.
Austrian labour law promotes the integration of the disabled into
working life and is aimed at making up for prevailing competitive
disadvantages. The Employment of Disabled Persons Act (BEinstG,
Federal Law Gazette 1970/22), for example, obliges employers with 25
or more employees to also engage disabled persons. This does not give
individual handicapped persons a claim to employment, but employers
who fail to conform have to pay a compensation tax to a public fund.
The money so accumulated is primarily used to promote employment of
the disabled. One way to do this is to establish sheltered workshops
and to support a workplace layout adequate to the needs of the
disabled person. The Employment of Disabled Persons Act also provides
for special protection from dismissal in order to prevent handicapped
persons from being ousted from the labour market. They may only be
dismissed after the relevant committee of the provincial Office for
the Disabled has given its consent and after consultation of the
Office of the Provincial Government responsible for the execution of
the relevant provincial law. Without its approval the dismissal has no
legal effect.
Literature#
Fingerzeige fuer behinderte Menschen, ed. by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs; C. Badelt and A. Oesterle, Zur Lebenssituation behinderter Menschen in Oesterreich, 1993.