Enabling Disabled : A Civil Rights Act for 14 Million Workers

A new law to prevent employers from discriminating against people with disabilities will take effect Sunday, filling gaps in existing legislation and for the first time creating a definitive civil rights act for 14 million potential workers.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing the act, has estimated that accommodations will cost businesses $16 million and that the commission itself will have to spend an additional $25 million in enforcement. But the agency has also predicted that the law will bring in $386 million in decreased government handouts and increased productivity and taxes.

Under the terms of the Americans With Disabilities Act, all businesses with 25 or more employees will be required to make “reasonable accommodations” for qualified employees and applicants with physical, mental or learning disabilities after July 26. Businesses with more than 15 employees will have to comply in two years.

The law, which was signed in 1990, is expected to transform many of employers’ most common practices. Interviewers, for example, may no longer ask applicants about their impairments. And, once hired, employees should be provided “reasonable” equipment or allowances to make them equal members of the workplace.

While some of the act’s provisions have already been enacted in specific industries, various states and the federal government, the current law will provide comprehensive job protections, ultimately affecting more than 600,000 businesses throughout the country.

“The ADA is really at the forefront of social policy in this country,” said Alan A. Reich, president of the National Organization on Disability. “It’s identifying and bringing into the mainstream a segment of the population who previously have never been thought about as a group, and whose potential has never been recognized.”

The employment requirements, which are only one part of the act, are aimed at increasing opportunities for the country’s 14.2 million people with disabilities who are between the ages of 16 and 64, who had a median income of only $8,536 in 1989. Only 15% of those people worked full time that year, according to Mitchell LaPlante, director of the Disability Statistics Program at UC San Francisco.

Not all working-age people with disabilities are likely to see immediate improvements under the act. Christopher Bell, an acting associate legal council for the EEOC, predicted that the immediate beneficiaries will be injured workers, who can no longer be so easily laid off. Bell also said younger people who received skills and a public education under an earlier law, the Individuals With Disabilities Act of 1975, may find employers more willing to hire them.

Until now, people with disabilities have historically been shunted into certain fields: entry-level and minimum-wage work, and the public sector, which has been regulated for nearly 20 years.

Bill Mlynarski found employment refuge with the U.S. government last year after a yearlong search. He well recalls the tribulations of applying for work as a blind person: arriving for interviews in hot July weather, his guide dog panting and his suit wrinkled from a long bus ride, only to be told he couldn’t apply because he couldn’t read a typing test.

“I never tried to apply for anything that was above my head or that I didn’t think I had the qualifications for,” Mlynarski said. “But they hardly ever asked me about my merits.”

That sort of treatment will be outlawed under the new act, which will require employers to accommodate qualified workers like Mlynarski. That means providing things such as Dictaphones or large-type computer screens during screenings and on the job--unless the accommodation poses an “undue hardship” on the business.

Expanding the protections offered by states such as California, which has banned job discrimination against physically disabled people for more than a decade, disabilities are broadly defined under the federal law as anything that impairs or substantially limits a major life function, such as walking, seeing or breathing.

To give employers and employees leeway, the law was intentionally left vague by its creators. To help define the act’s slippery terms, the EEOC plans to issue guidelines in the next few months. But the current lack of specificity has also been criticized by businesses and lawyers, who charge that its ambiguousness will sprout a jungle of lawsuits.

“Employers are going to have to exercise their judgment, unfortunately frequently in consultation with their lawyers,” said Paul W. Cane Jr., an attorney who practices labor law and who has co-authored a book for businesses about the act.

Cane is also concerned that obliging businesses to maintain and employ people with disabilities will drive up not only the visible costs of running a business, such as adaptive equipment, but also the hidden costs, such as litigation and consultants’ fees and workers compensation insurance rates.

But Richard Lord, benefits manager of Community Hospitals of Central California, said his experience has led him to the opposite conclusions.

Two years ago, Lord said his company adopted an innovative program in an attempt to stem workers compensation costs by lightening injured employees’ work loads instead of placing them on long-term disability.

Flora Corona, a clerical worker who contracted carpal tunnel syndrome after 11 years with Community Hospitals, said remaining at work provided a variety of benefits. “Gosh, being able to work and not . . . worry about your income, that’s a big part of being able to mend your body,” she said.

The result of the program, Lord said, has been a $900,000 savings in workers compensation and a 50% decrease in lost-time claims. “It has been good for us in terms of productivity, morale and the bottom line,” he said.

Liz Savage, national training director for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, traces many employers’ concerns about the act to a cottage industry of ADA consultants, “so-called experts, most of whom don’t have any experience with persons with disabilities.”

“Employers should not think every time they see a disabled person, they’re going to get sued,” Savage said. “That’s not coming from us; that’s coming from fear mongers and snake oil salesmen.”

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)

The act was passed in 1990 to expand opportunities for the disabled. Portions of the law will be phased in through 1996, with certain sections affecting the workplace taking effect Sunday.

Highlights:

* Prohibits job discrimination against qualified people with mental, physical or learning disabilities.

* Employers will have to make “reasonable accommodations” for disabled people in terms of hiring, paying, firing and all other aspects of the workplace.

* Employers will not have to make changes that would cause them “undue hardships.”

What’s Happened This Year:

* Jan. 26: Certain businesses required to remove physical barriers; new buses and trains made accessible to people in wheelchairs.

* July 26: Business with 25 or more employees may no longer discriminate against qualified workers or applicants because of their disabilities; rail stations must be wheelchair-accessible.

People Affected:

* 34.2 million with disabilities will benefit from some aspect of the law, including 14.2 million aged 16-64 who may profit from the act’s job discrimination sections.

Estimated Costs:

* Cost to employers: $16 million in “reasonable accommodations,” such as large-print computer screens, widened doorways or Dictaphones. There may be additional expense for litigation and insurance.

* Cost to the government: $25 million for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement of the act.

Benefits:

* Increased productivity: $164 million.

* Savings: $222 million in decreased government support and increased taxes of disabled people.

Sources: Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Mitchell LaPlants, Disability Statistics Program, UC San Francisco.