The Future of Work Podcast

Hello and welcome back to the ILO's Future of Work podcast.

I'm Sophy Fisher.

The Paralympic Games have just opened in Paris, France.

The first official Paralympics were held in Rome in 1960,

and since then they have developed enormously.

The Paris Games will feature a record number of delegations,

and there'll be 1300 hours of live television coverage.

That's comparable to the amount of the Olympics themselves.

The Paralympics,

like the Olympics, are often the high point of an athlete's career,

but the life of an elite athlete is pretty tough.

Even more so for athletes with disabilities.

Sporting careers can be short.

Many sports don't pay, and even more don't pay enough to live on.

Plus, there's the question of working conditions.

So what is life like for a Paralympic athlete?

Well, luckily today we have with us somebody who can tell us

exactly what that's like because Josh Vander Vies was a former Paralympic athlete

and bronze medallist in the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.

He is now co-chef d'équipe of the Canadian Paralympic team.

Josh, welcome.

Hi. Thanks so much for having me today.

Yeah,

and Josh is in Paris, and here with me in

the studio is the ILO's Oliver Liang.

Oliver is head of the Public and Private Services unit in the ILO's

Sectoral Policies Department, and his team also deals with the working conditions

of service workers, which of course includes professional athletes.

So, Oliver, welcome to you too.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks. Hi, Sophy and hi, Josh.

Right, Josh, you're in Paris.

You lucky thing.

Tell us about Paris.

What's the atmosphere like?

Well, it's the City of Lights

of course.

The whole city is alive with the Paralympic spirit.

We had the opening ceremony.

Marching, walking, rolling down the Champs-Élysées

from the Arc de Triomphe, to the Place

de la Concorde was incredible,

outstanding.

And,

this is the place to be, right?

The Olympics and the Paralympics are

one of the greatest things that our world has.

And so there's nowhere else I'd rather be right now.

Yeah.

And you're a former competitor.

And now you're the Chef d'Equipe.

Do you miss the competition?

Well, I mean, I do miss competing.

You know, what I don't miss is preparing.

I don't miss the training, and I don't miss the,

the weeks and months away from my family, traveling to compete.

But I am looking on with some envy

to the next generation of boccia athletes,

especially on our Canadian team.

They're going to do us incredibly proud.

My sport was boccia. It's one of the

two sports in the Paralympics only.

It doesn't have an Olympic counterpart.

It's a precision sport. Leather balls.

On a hard indoor court,

kind of like curling or pétanque or lawn bowling.

And, you know, I loved it.

I finally pulled off a bronze medal in London 2012, as you said.

I also competed in Athens 2004, just missed qualifying

to Beijing by one single point at the World Championships.

So that's just a millimetre too close or too far.

But yeah. A millimetre too far.

Yeah. Okay.

Well, we're going to come back to that in a minute,

and about the, you know, the strains and what it takes to,

what it takes out of your life to compete at this level.

But let me just move you on a bit.

What do you think that the Paralympics has done to,

affect the perception of the general public, of people

with disabilities in general and athletes with disabilities in particular?

Do you think it's enhanced that perception?

Well, I'm always thinking,

trying to identify which inclusion initiatives actually make an impact,

actually move the needle in diversity work diversity, equity and inclusion.

A lot of the initiatives don't actually do anything

or they make, discrimination worse, is the great frustration.

And so I do think that the Paralympic Games helps with disability inclusion.

It's millions of hits, videos, images,

stories of athletes who are proud of their disabilities.

And that kind of disability.

pride is something that people don't often see.

I think it's such a startling thing

that it really does, shift attitudes.

Yeah, the level of achievement is extraordinary.

But in the past, the Paralympics has been associated,

with an image of athletes with disabilities

as they've been characterized as superhumans.

But that's a bit controversial.

And some people, some people rejected it, don't like it.

What do you think of it?

Do you think it's misleading, or do you think it's helpful?

Well,

I've spent a lot of hours thinking about this over the years.

It's a very interesting line of thought.

So the problem

you can run into is when you start thinking about,

superhero-ism just being about having a disability.

So if you're,

if you're a superhero just for existing while disabled, that can be problematic.

It's not heroic to be disabled and have a bank account or go and purchase

a meal at your, local restaurant with your family and friends.

It's not an act of superhero-ism

to be disabled and have a job.

But what is superhuman is the incredible athletic performances

on the world stage of Paralympians,

just like of Olympians.

And so it gets tricky.

The issue, in my view, is when you start to see the baseline change.

So if you start to think that just to recognize

someone for their baseline humanity when they're disabled,

if they have to be a Paralympian, if they have to be an inspirational speaker

and lawyer and leader just to get basic recognition as a human being,

that's where it's very problematic.

But I also think it's problematic to not celebrate

the super heroic, exploits of Paralympians.

Now, you talked earlier about,

you know, the commitment that being a Paralympian requires.

You're now, you've got a day job now,

which is Director of diversity at Vancouver Airport.

So you've managed to to build a successful career outside athletics.

And you're also, I think, a qualified lawyer.

How difficult was it when you were,

as it were, a practicing Paralympic athlete to balance these two things?

Because in addition to achieving athletic success, you also have to make a living.

While I was in law school, still, when I was competing in London 2012

at the University of British Columbia, I was going there part time,

which is sort of rarely, given permission to go part time.

But they allowed it since I was,

a Paralympian and,

it's all about attitude.

I always saw that sport was going to be a stepping stone for me in my career.

And so I did go to university.

I did my undergrad and then went on to law school, which is,

a second degree in Canada. And,

I really believe that having

those two intense things in my life at the same time, both,

doing my studies and competing on the international stage, I do think

that they helped each other, that being, a student made me a better athlete.

And being an athlete made me a better student.

I also had the incredible support of my family.

My wife, she's a retired fencer herself from Lithuania.

She came to Canada many years ago, but she competed on the Lithuanian

national fencing team.

She was working as a dental hygienist

luckily, when I was doing my sport career, and she just made it possible for me

to gallivant around the world because she really knew the power of sport.

Right. Okay.

At this point, let me bring in Oliver Liang to give us a bigger perspective,

because Oliver, from the ILO standpoint, athletes are workers, right?

Professional athletes are workers.

And they are entitled to the same rights as every other worker.

But, you know, there are particular problems

here, obviously, balancing careers.

So what about what are some of the challenges

you see them facing in creating that balance?

What about issues such as voice of being heard

and of course, occupational safety and health and things like stress?

That's absolutely right. Sophy.

Back in 2020, the ILO actually had a meeting

on professional athletes where it was agreed by the tripartite

constituents that professional athletes are workers

and that they enjoy fundamental principles and rights at work,

which means for the ILO, as you know, protection,

from forced labour and child labour, non-discrimination,

and then, of course, promotion of freedom of association

and collective bargaining and occupational safety and health.

So I think these are really important issues in the world of sports

and, and also, of course, in Paralympic sports.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of athletes, get their income through sports

or a lot of identity, even if it's things like endorsement deals.

So it's important that they have freedom of association.

It's great to see that Josh was was head of athletes Can,

which is an important organization in representing athletes.

And to engage in

social dialogue with governing bodies and sports.

And yeah, as you pointed out, occupational safety and health is a big issue.

We know there's a lot of stress in sports.

The enormous training hours,

the potential for abuse, especially of young athletes,

on top of the mental stress, these are things that that have a labour dimension.

And it's important that, we address those. Because, of course,

some athletes in areas such as gymnastics and stuff are indeed very young.

So there are particular,

particular issues related to those.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

I think,

in any sport where you have a lot of authority

by governing bodies, but also by coaches over young athletes.

and as you said, sometimes kids unfortunately can lead to some situations.

Well, it has led to to some horrible situations of abuse.

And I think, social partners have a big role in making sure that

there's better governance of these kinds of activities.

And of course, the issue of freedom of association

is, is a particularly complex one here because by definition,

the people in this industry are competing against each other.

Right? And a lot of them are not employees.

They're not like football or basketball and team sports,

where you often have an employer, a very clear employee relationship.

They are, independent workers to many degrees.

But for ILO, it's still important that, these workers

have at least the fundamental protection of certain rights.

Okay.

So tell us some of the things that the ILO is doing to improve

work-related standards for professional athletes,

whether they're athletes with disabilities or otherwise, and,

of course, other people in the sports industry,

because it's a multi-billion dollar industry.

Not everybody is an athlete.

Absolutely.

Well, I mean, it's important, of course, the ILO does work

a lot on disability inclusion and the promotion of rights of persons

with disabilities in the field of work, which of course includes sports.

And for athletes in particular, it's a new area for the ILO,

but certainly promoting social dialogue is one of our key aspects.

We for

example, there is a collective agreement now between,

the football unions and, the professional leagues

and football, which the ILO supports through technical advice

on such issues as non-discrimination and occupational safety and health.

And we hope to promote social dialogue in other fields as well.

We recently published a brief on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work,

which is available on the web for people who want to find out more.

So it's certainly an area that we'd like to expand in.

Yeah. Great.

Josh, you've been, competing in the athletics

industry at a high level for quite a long time now.

I mean, what changes have you observed in how Paralympic athletes

are supported during their athletic career?

And of course, in preparation for life after that athletic career?

Well, there's a real shift.

The sports systems of all the different countries are realizing

that some active intervention is is needed.

In Canada we have a game plan.

It's called an initiative of the sports system,

which, has all sorts of programming that helps athletes plan

for their retirement, for their transition after sport to a career and

helps them with networking and job opportunities.

You know, in my view, it's really about

shifting the the narrative and the thinking

at its most fundamental level, which is that

you don't need to only focus on sport when you're an athlete.

It's completely okay.

It's not even neutral.

It's positive to focus on your career after sport, to either do your studies

while you're an athlete or to, plan when you're going to do your studies

in your long term planning. It makes you a better athlete in my, in my view.

And so,

it's about making sure

that your whole identity is not wrapped up in being an athlete.

It's such an important part of who we are.

And it gives us so many transferable, skills in the workplace

to be competing for the sake of competing, doing work for the sake of doing work.

That's something that we really struggle

with, athletes, when we go into the workplace.

We're used to doing things at, you know, 98, 99% of our capacity,

and then all of a sudden in the office, everyone's

going at 7%, and we're just so confused.

If you were pitching a

Paralympic athlete to an employer,

what are those transferable skills that you would pitch?

Well, it's the performance under pressure and it's the chasing of goals.

I mean, it's KPIs

in the workplace, our eyes often glaze over

when we hear about KPIs, but that's what athletes excel at.

Right, okay.

And commitment obviously.

And, the ability to push through difficult times.

Indeed. Yeah. Great. Well, listen,

that was fascinating.

Thank you so much.

Have a wonderful time in Paris.

I'm sure you will.

And as I say, we wish we were

with you.

But for the moment, that is all we have time for

for this Future of Work podcast, my thanks to Josh Vander Vies

from the Canadian Paralympic Team and Oliver Liang from the ILO.

And thank you to you too for your time and your attention.

Please join us again soon for another Future of Work podcast.

Meanwhile, you can always catch up with us on social media.

We're on LinkedIn, we're on X and on Instagram.

So until the next time from me, Sophy Fisher, goodbye.