Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507280042
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANDREW MOLLISON COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In between, for the past two and a half years, the college-educated Tennessean has been looking in Chattanooga for a job in marketing or communications.
``That's short-term. One of my bouts of unemployment lasted more than five years,'' said Hindman, who was born with spina bifada.
``That means I use a wheelchair,'' she said on the phone. ``I'm healthy. I'm energetic. I'm extremely mobile. But when [potential] employers see a woman in a wheelchair, their perception is that I must tire easily.''
Hindman had just returned from a job-hunting trip to Atlanta.
``It seems to be a boom town. I had good interviews, and I've got my fingers crossed,'' she said.
But if her latest interviews don't pan out, she won't be shocked.
She knows that five years after the passage of the anti-bias law called the Americans with Disabilities Act, jobs for people with disabilities remain rare.
On July 26, 1990, when President Bush signed the ADA into law, about three out of every 10 working-age people with disabilities had jobs or businesses.
That 30 percent ratio - far below the 80 percent employment rate for people without disabilities - still holds, Census Bureau surveys show.
But optimists say the ADA has paved the way for workplace breakthroughs by toppling barriers in public buildings and businesses and in public transit.
``It used to be when my van broke down, I was up the creek,'' said Virginia Roberts of Austin, Texas. ``I couldn't just catch a ride in a neighbor's car, because my electric wheelchair wouldn't fit in the trunk, and I couldn't register [for a home pickup] with paratransit, because I drove to work.
``Now I just wheel over to a bus stop and catch a [lift-equipped] bus. No sweat. In one year it saved me, I would say, almost three weeks of leave,'' said Roberts, executive director of the Texas Governor's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.
But in Tallahassee, her Florida counterpart, Carol Ann Breyer, said that if society really wanted more disabled people to work, it would change laws that make many of them risk losing health coverage and steady subsistence-level benefits if they get low-wage jobs that could disappear at any moment.
``Not just people who are able-bodied - but a lot of people with disabilities - still don't really believe people with disabilities belong in the work force,'' Breyer complained.
``So?'' snorted Leye Chrzanowski of Chantilly, Va. She is editor-in-chief of ``One Step Ahead,'' a national newsletter by and for people with disabilities.
``I keep hearing about how employers have to be `sensitized' to people with disabilities before they'll hire them. That is a bunch of crap,'' said Chrzanowski, who works mostly at home when the symptoms of her multiple sclerosis increase and mostly in the offices of EKA Communications Inc., when the symptoms fade.
``An employer should be looking for qualified applicants, whether they're black, white, disabled or whatever,'' she said. ``People with disabilities shouldn't go in and beg for a job, but we should be assertive and go after the ones for which we feel qualified.''
Almost all employers say they agree, according to surveys by Louis Harris Associates Inc. More than three-fourths of the executives polled this spring said their firms have made changes to help disabled employees do their jobs, agree that the adjustments were affordable and worth it, and support keeping or strengthening the ADA.
In fact, someone disabled on the job now has a 75 percent chance of getting back on the job, compared to 50 percent before the ADA, said Tony Coelho, chairman of the President's Committee on Employment of the Disabled- and who has epilepsy.
But outside applicants might not have as much luck. Among executives of companies with 50 or more employees, the number who told Harris pollsters that their own firm had hired anybody with a disability within the previous three years remained essentially stagnant - at 62 percent in 1986 and 64 percent this year.
Such hiring has actually dropped among owners of smaller businesses, which provide most of the nation's new jobs, said Wendy Lechner of the National Federation of Independent Business.
``They have a very strong fear of liability'' under the ADA, she said.
While declining to identify the owner of an auto body shop in Atlanta, she quoted him as saying this:
``In the past I would have given 'em a shot. Now I wouldn't dare, because I know that even if they can't do the job, and I fired them, that person can go to the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) and cost me hours of grief and hundreds of dollars in legal fees.''
The ADA's ban on job discrimination, phased in from July 1992 through July 1994, covers firms with more than 15 workers. At last count, the EEOC had received 45,000 complaints. Of the first 25,000 cases resolved, nearly half were dismissed on technicalities and one-third were found to show no reasonable cause.
``There are always some awful cases that you get with a new, untested law,'' said Cliff Crase, who edits Paraplegia News in Phoenix, Ariz., for the Paralyzed Veterans of America,
``My answer is that through the years this will be fine-tuned,'' Crase said. ``It's like the consulting scams. During the first two years of the ADA, a lot of good people got taken for thousands of dollars by people who called themselves ADA consultants. But thank God, all that got weeded out.''
In Tallahassee, Breyer said she thinks some employers use ``an alleged fear of lawsuits'' as an excuse to avoid hiring people who are different.
``It's not fear, it's discomfort,'' she said. ``Lots of people squirm a little at associating with anyone who reminds them that it's not like race or gender: Anyone can become disabled at any time.''
by CNB