District of Columbia APSE: The Network on Employment Things Worth Reading...
...collected at the end of the week,
August 8, 2008:
The Story of Danieal Kelly (large pdf file)
EEOC Faults Efforts to Hire People with Disabilities, by Stephen Losey
January 16, 2008
The federal government is becoming an increasingly unwelcome place for people with disabilities to work, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Jan. 15.
Employment of people with disabilities hit its lowest point in 22 years in fiscal 2006, the EEOC said. Data for 2007 is not yet available. The federal government employed 23,490 disabled people in fiscal 2006, which is about 0.97 percent of the federal work force. At the peak in 1994, 1.24 percent of the federal work force was disabled. At the lowest point in 1984, about 0.96 percent of the federal work force was disabled.
At the same time, harassment complaints have steadily increased since 2003. Disabled employees filed 1,393 harassment complaints in fiscal 2003 and filed 1,602 complaints in 2006.
What’s more, most managers don’t seem to understand how to accommodate disabled people. Many agencies haven’t made hiring them a priority, and an obtuse hiring process may discourage applicants, the EEOC said in its report.
The government is not living up to its obligations, EEOC Commissioner Christine Griffin said.
“Under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, federal agencies have an affirmative action requirement to hire and advance individuals with disabilities, yet 35 long years later, there is little progress,” Griffin said. “Agency leaders must make this issue a priority.”
EEOC studied the hiring of people who are blind, deaf, partially or completely paralyzed, are missing extremities, have convulsive disorders, have distorted limbs or spines, or suffer from mental illness or mental retardation. It also found that the proportion of disabled people receiving promotions is falling. The EEOC said that 0.9 percent of the nearly 290,000 promotions went to disabled people in 2002. But by 2006, disabled employees received 0.7 percent of the 277,000 promotions handed out in the government.
EEOC said that 43 percent of federal agencies have not set goals for increasing the employment of disabled people. “This may account for why little progress is actually being realized,” EEOC said. The commission said agencies should set firm hiring goals as part of their strategic plans, offer assistance to disabled people seeking jobs, and train managers on how to use underutilized hiring authorities that were designed to ease hiring of the disabled.
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