Disability and employment

Introduction

In an extension of research demonstrating disability discrimination within the work force, this paper focuses on the laws designed to prevent such discrimination. These laws protect individuals with disabilities in recruitment, pre-employment screening, hiring, promotions, layoffs and termination's, and any other term, condition, or privilege of employment. The Europeans With Disabilities Act not only opened the door for millions of Europeans to get back into the workplace, it is paving the road for new facilities in the workplace, new training programs and creating jobs designed for a disabled society. The preamble to the law states that it covers 43,000,000 Europeans. The ADA is one of the most significant laws in European History. In this paper I will give a brief description of the statutes set by the Europeans With Disabilities Act and further discuss what employers are required to do according to the A.D.A. and some of the regulations they must abide by.

Statistics have shown that disabled people account for almost a fifth of the working-age population in Great Britain, but for only one-eighth of all individuals in employment. There are more than 6.5 million individuals with a work-limiting, long-term disability or health problem in Great Britain, [Smith & Thomas] but disabled people are merely half as likely as non-disabled people to be in employment. [Pearson & Watson.] Disabled employees make on average two-thirds of the wages of non-disabled employees, and it is expected that they would be employed in manual and unskilled occupations compared to non-disabled employees. [Smith & Thomas]. Partly, this can be made clear by the effect which a physical or mental impairment might have on a disabled person's ability to carry out certain duties, however there is also sound evidence to imply that disabled individuals experience systematic discrimination compared with employment, this was often as a result of ill-informed, conventional statements on the part of employers about the influence of certain disabilities on the work-capacity of such employees and the complexity of making changes to working arrangements and changes to the premises to accommodate for the disabled employees.

Discussion

Disability Discrimination in Employment

On July 26, 1990, the Europeans with Disabilities Act signed into law intending to make the European society more accessible to people with disabilities. The general purpose of this legislation is to extend the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, and national origin to persons with disabilities. This further protects individuals with disabilities in recruitment, pre-employment screening, hiring, promotions, layoffs and termination's, and any other term, condition, or privilege of employment. Private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions are covered in the act. In addition, the ADA applies to all aspects of participation in society, including employment, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications.

The ADA prepares employees by providing appropriate information and personnel training on the provisions of the ADA, its relevance to the functioning of the organization as a whole, and the responsibilities of specific personnel. There may be as many as one thousand different disabilities ...