Banner Year Seen for Disabled Job Seekers

The new law that allows people with disabilities to go to work without loss of medical benefits may make 2000 a banner year for them.

The Work Incentives Improvement Act, signed by President Clinton in December, “could potentially help thousands of people with disabilities join or rejoin the work force,” said Peter Blanck, professor of law and medicine at the University of Iowa, Ames.

In a white-hot economy that has employers searching every nook and cranny for help, nearly three in four working-age adults with disabilities are either “unemployed or underemployed,” the Labor Department said.

It’s estimated that only about 30% of the 16 million working-age people with disabilities hold jobs even though studies reveal that, when hired, they perform as well as, or even outperform, co-workers.

This is no surprise to their employers. Three-fourths of those with disabilities have finished high school, 44% hold a college degree and three-fourths are computer-literate, said Charles Riley, editor in chief of We, a lifestyle magazine for people with disabling conditions.

HR magazine termed them “a mother lode of skilled employees with strong incentives to work” who are being heavily recruited by temporary personnel firms. For example, “thousands” of Manpower’s 800,000 North American employees are people with disabilities, estimated spokeswoman Lisa Morgen- Barrientos, of Milwaukee.

What might surprise employers is that nearly 70% of people with a disability say they need no special equipment to do their jobs and that in half the cases the aids cost under $500, HR reported.

For Web site designer Lisa Ellis, born with a hearing impediment, an inexpensive telephone amplifier is all she needs to do her job. Her supervisor, Bob Galovic, at the American Automobile Assn., Heathrow, Fla., says she “knows her stuff.”

Ellis is one of 150 computer-literate techies with disabilities hired by staffing firm Alternative Resources Corp., of Barrington, Ill., in the last several years through ARC’s project REACH. Recruiters might have a much easier time placing the disabled, especially now that “evaluation-hire” arrangements are in vogue. We magazine’s Riley said he finds “a new commitment” by corporate America “to do that little extra to hire and accommodate” them.

The New York-based magazine’s just published rankings of the 10 employers who did the most to hire people with disabilities in 1999 were: 1. Microsoft Corp.; 2. Johnson & Johnson; 3. IBM Corp.; 4. Caterpillar Inc.; 5. Charles Schwab Corp.; 6. Crestar Bank; 7. Wells Fargo & Co.; 8. Ford Motor Co.; 9. Booz Allen & Hamilton and 10. Honeywell International Inc.

Sherwood Ross is a freelance writer who covers workplace issues for Reuters.