Posted on 07/26/2009 5:14:12 AM PDT by alwaysconservative
From: Secretary Hilda Solis [mailto:Secretaryhildasolis@ dol.gov] Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 2:27 PM Subject: ADA Anniversary
Dear Colleagues, This Sunday marks the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)--landmark legislation designed to prevent discrimination and enable individuals with disabilities to fully participate in all aspects of society.
The ADA’s provisions include the right to seek, obtain and maintain employment without being hampered by physical or attitudinal barriers. I believe that having a job is a civil right. Those who are qualified for and want to work should not be denied that right because of an inaccessible building or outdated set of assumptions about what they can or cannot do.
Unfortunately, the employment rate for people with disabilities in this country is unacceptably low: 22.6% of individuals with disabilities in our country are participating in the labor force, compared to 71.9% of persons with no disability. And although the federal government strives to be a model employer, in actuality, the number of people with disabilities in the federal workfo rce has decreased in the past decade. This trend must be reversed, and it is my commitment that the Department of Labor be a leader in this effort.
As we ramp up our efforts to hire 3000 people at the Department, I challenge all DOL managers to recruit and employ people with disabilities. There are many tools to assist you. Chief among them is the Schedule A hiring authority that allows federal managers to hire individuals with certain disabilities non-competitively. This is a powerful hiring method that should be utilized.
The Department of Labor has an abundance of other resources to assist you, including the Workforce Recruitment Program to find candidates, the Job Accommodation Network for guidance on providing workplace accommodations, and the Employer Assistance and Resource Network for help with employment resources. In addition--in conjunction with the 19th Anniversary of the ADA--we will be re-launching and renaming DisabilityInfo.gov. Starting Monday, it will be live at Disability.gov. The site, spearheaded by the Department’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, has been redesigned to include new social media features to encourage feedback and dialogue. It contains thousands of disability-related resources from 22 federal agencies, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and state and local governments. This is a vital, state-of-the-art resource, and I encourage you to use it.
Opportunities are open at the U.S. Department of Labor. We must ensure that they are open to everyone. As always, I appreciate your hard work and commitment to America’s workers. Sincerely, Hilda L. Solis U.S. Secretary of Labor
these weirdo people who are against jobs being created...
The Soviets had a similar perspective. Of course, it was only a “right” if you had the correct ideology.
And for those who had jobs that the government created for them, which, at the peak of the Soviet experiment was virtually ALL jobs, the motto was,
“The pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
I’ve been to Russia four times, twice in 1998, and twice in 2002. In 1998, I learned that the average wage for an engineer was about $30 per month. I was told that a heart surgeon in Moscow could expect about $150 per month.
Of course, their squalid apartments were government subsidized, so their rents were low. And “medical care”, such as it was, was “free”.
But for all products and services, I refer you to the above motto.
This is where we are headed.
“I believe that having a job is a civil right.”
***
And I believe having a big sccreen color tv is a civil right. So what are you going to do to get me one.
they’e gone after the city of atlanta, which is already in debt and
raising property taxes. now atlanta has to come up with the
significant fees for non=compliance. and , of course, atlanta
has been run by dems for years. now, they can go after each other.
22.6% of the disabled can’t find work. 16.5% of the people that are ABLE to work can’t find full-time work due to the 0bamaconomy.
So, we’re at 39% unemployment and rising. Fewer and fewer producers pulling the wagon...and Congress continues to spend like there’s no tomorrow!
And now this beotch says stuff like THIS? Yeesh.
Let's just hope and pray that we can turn things around before too much damage is done......
“Unfortunately, the employment rate for people with disabilities in this country is unacceptably low: 22.6% of individuals with disabilities in our country are participating in the labor force, compared to 71.9% of persons with no disability. “
***
Maybe the disabled are unemployed because they can’t work???
U’m on disability...have been for about a year and a half. I am hopeful to go back to work once certain training and rehab are completed. But as of now, I can’t work...so maybe that’s why I’m unemployed?
Talk about a bunch of bogus statistics.
Sarah, please pick up the white phone...
the Schedule A hiring authority that allows federal managers to hire individuals with certain disabilities non-competitively. This is a powerful hiring method that should be utilized.
Non-competitively.
In other words, a person with a higher skill level who is
not disabled would not stand a chance for that job.
No mention of a veterans preference either.
Of course she does. She is a communist.
In Obama’s new USSA, preferences are only for the “chosen ones”, and that doesn’t include any of us bitter-clingers, vets-who-are-potential-terrorists, or face it, anybody with a grain of sense in their heads to have voted for the other candidate. See the Chrysler dealership politically-motivated closings as an example.
But, I wonder how Solis’ weird remarks hold up against the Supreme Court’s holding in the Ricci case?
Just like in the former Soviet Union, at ACORN, or at SEIU headquarters.
Remember, in communism you could be punished for your thoughts.
Why is the Department of Labor hiring 3,000 people? That's a heck of a lot of people to do what?
Come an get me you dirty rats!
A few years ago while in the Secretary of State office to renew my license plate, I observed the following:
An employee behind the counter was obviously near-blind, but he had SOME small portion of sight.....he wore a pair of ordinary looking glasses with a black tube attached to one of the lenses, which looked like a miniature one-half of a binocular.........for reading, his total vision was thru this little tube. His duties were exactly the same as the rest of the counter employees.
He needed to read a short letter or affidavit that was submitted by the customer at his counter position.....I saw it well enough to see that it was perhaps 8-10 typed lines across the page......to read it, he brought the paper to about 8 inches from the tube, and slowly turned his head so to direct the tube across the page, taking about 10 full seconds per sweep across the page.....I doubt if he could see any but the shortest full words within what his field of vision is, and had to “keep up” mentally for the longer words........you can use your imagination for what I saw when he used the keyboard....what SHOULD have been a 3 minute transaction took at least 10 minutes. I have no doubt that this guy is “legally blind”.
Technically, not quite accurate. Ones ideology largely determined the array of jobs their rights afforded them. From prestigious Politburo job to labor camp above the arctic circle in Siberia.
The ADA’s provisions include the right to seek, obtain and maintain employment without being hampered by physical or attitudinal barriers.
I can agree with sensible elimination of physical hinderances, although there are extreme situtations where it would be impractical. For instance, it would be ludicrous to insist that Stephen Hawking had a "civil right" to be employed as a paramedic, firefighter or police officer simply because that's what he "wanted" to do.
"Attitudinal barriers" are more problematic, as they interfere with managerial judgement of performance and who is most qualified for a position. I certainly agree that it would be "bad management" to disqualify a capable employee based on a handicap that does not affect job performance. But I'm opposed to legislation that would hamper job performance just to accommodate individuals who aren't up to the task.
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