ABSTRACT
The ultimate goal of Samhall employment is to make the transition to employment with a regular organization, and according to Samhall, the ultimate proof that the organization’s rehabilitation works in terms of making people less dependent on welfare support. According to an agreement with the Swedish State, Samhall should yearly be able to achieve transitions of 5% of existing staff. ‘The organized transition process,’ as it is called at Samhall, includes a number of practices, ceremonies, and procedures aimed at ‘guaranteeing the same individually-based approach at the termination of employment as at its beginning.’ The formal responsibility for transitions lies with the employee’s supervisor at Samhall and the National Employment Office:
Our organizations have mutual responsibility for providing the Samhall employee with opportunities for a transition to employment with another employer. On the part of the Samhall company, this is about everything from preparatory and motivation augmenting measures to supporting and following up the employee after the transition to another employer. When the efforts and forms of support provided by the National Employment Office are deemed necessary, the National Employment Office is also afforded a responsibility for contributing towards bringing about a transition. An important point of departure is then that all employees that are prepared for a transition are reported and registered as applicants for an exchange at the National Employment Office.
The Samhall supervisor is the one who decides if a person is ‘mature for a transition,’ based on his or her experience of the development of the occupationally disabled person. The supervisor then contacts the National Employment Office so that together they can decide on a suitable workplace. A government study that carried out an interview survey among Samhall’s occupationally disabled employees with the aim of mapping Samhall’s transition work, posed the question, ‘Have you ever during recent years talked to your immediate superior about what will happen with you in the 98future?’ This hinted at the significance of the supervisor for the realization of transitions. An administrative official at the National Employment Office was of the opinion that ‘those people who succeed in transitions’ are those that had ‘been observed’ by their supervisor at Samhall ‘for a long time.’ A Samhall document described that the process was initiated when ‘the employee and his or her immediate superior are in agreement that the employee is prepared for a transition (both can and wants to).’ Among other things, the responsibility of the National Employment Office for transitions involves offering a new employer on the regular labor market a wage subsidy during the first year of employment, which usually amounts to between 50 and 70%. One supervisor at Samhall emphasized that ‘we are forced to pay out wage allowances since they [the occupationally disabled] do not have the same capacity as healthy people.’ Consequently, ‘wage allowance are central for our transitions’ another supervisor at Samhall pointed out, which was confirmed by an administrative official at the National Employment Office who thought, ‘There is a difference between working in a sheltered workplace [Samhall] and at a normal workplace. He [the occupationally disabled person] may need extra instruction and the like,’ which would thus motivate a wage allowance. A wage allowance presupposes that the person continues to be coded as occupationally disabled, which is an administrative requirement for granting a wage allowance within the National Employment Office. Thus, even if a person leaves Samhall as an occupationally disabled employee, he or she typically continues to be occupationally disabled in the wider welfare system of which Samhall is a part.