For many persons with disabilities, the hardships that many nondisabled Americans are feeling today is an everyday, all the time experience that they would gladly accept in exchange for what they live in now. Even with the current unemployment experienced by nondisabled persons today, they are still far more employed than persons with disabilities. In this section of my paper I present examples of corporate discrimination and oppression concerning persons with disabilities and employment. I also talk about ways that disabled and nondisabled persons in companies learn from each other. I begin with a statement on disability and poverty.

Denying an entire culture the rights that others feel they deserve is criminal because it keeps it in poverty. According to Gandhi, poverty is the worst form of violence. Worse, keeping people with disabilities from equal participation in society is harming everyone in that society. We are all part of a social whole, and denying a certain group of people is like denying yourself food to eat, or water to drink. We are all necessary for each other to live in our society. Businesses hire people so that their business can prosper, and people need to work for businesses to sustain themselves in America’s economy.

Corporations that hire people as workers must become more flexible in dealing with persons with disabilities. Some examples of disability inflexibility in corporations include Wal-Mart, United Airlines, and Boeing. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released statements on October 23^rd, 2001 and January 7^th, 2000 concerning two men who are deaf and their fight for employment with Wal-Mart.

Mr. Darnell and Mr. Fass brought suit against Wal-Mart in 1998 because Wal-Mart did not hire them, even though they were qualified for the jobs they were applying for. The lawsuit was not settled until January 2000, and even then Wal-Mart did not provide adequate training, revise its policies or conduct meetings with the goal of recruiting persons with disabilities as it was obliged to under the settlement. Wal-Mart felt that Darnell and Fass were incapable of doing the jobs they applied for. (EEOC, 2001)

The EEOC and the Arizona Center for Disability Law (ACDL) brought contempt proceedings against Wal-Mart in April of 2000, and on June 13^th, 2001 Judge William Browning found Wal-Mart in contempt and ordered it to pay fines, comply with the provisions of the decree on training and policies, and to air a commercial describing the experiences of Fass and Darnell, explaining ways that other persons can get help if they feel they have been discriminated against.

Some of the provisions of the decree that Wal-Mart must face include paying $66,250 each to Mr. Darnell and Mr. Fass. Wal-Mart must hire both men, and provide a sign language interpreter for them during their training and orientation, as well as at any meetings they attend. Wal-Mart must also provide reasonable accommodations for both men, including vibrating pagers, and installation of a TTY or TTD telecommunications system. Both workers will be awarded a corporate service date of September 1, 1995 for use in decisions based on their length of service with the company. Wal-Mart must also pay $57, 500 in attorney’s fees and litigation expenses incurred in representing Jeremy Fass and William Darnell. Of course, due to Wal-Mart’s inflexibility in hiring persons with disabilities during this time, they must also pay the cost of a commercial describing their lack of diversity awareness. (EEOC, 2000)

The lawsuit involving Mr. Fass and Mr. Darnell of Tucson, Arizona was only part of the EEOC’s efforts to help Wal-Mart understand the extent of its inflexible business practices toward persons with disabilities. In a release on December 17^th, 2001, the EEOC announced a $6.8 million dollar decree against Wal-Mart in Sacramento, California. The EEOC had brought a lawsuit against Wal-Mart over its “Matrix of Essential Job Functions”, which the EEOC felt violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Parties to the decree agreed to settle 12 other ADA lawsuits filed against Wal-Mart in 11 states. The “Matrix of Essential Job Functions” asked applicants for disability related information, in violation of Federal law.

The decree also requires Wal-Mart to give priority consideration for employment to applicants who were qualified for jobs but were turned down based on medical or disability related information. Money from the decree will be used to fund persons in the case, as well as 12 other Wal-Mart lawsuits. $3 million of the money will cover damages for people who were harmed by Wal-Mart’s pre-employment practices. (EEOC, 2001)

I think that Wal-Mart’s philosophy of “Always Low Prices, Always”, may grow a bit rusty and impracticable in the future if it does not cease inflexible, discriminatory and outright negative treatment of persons with disabilities. Thousands of dollars in fines and settlements won’t hurt Wal-Mart one bit. Negative advertising and word of mouth may very well cost Wal-Mart much more than the settlements mentioned here. One in five people in America has a disability, and if a significant number of these persons with disabilities should decide that a boycott of Wal-Mart is called for, Wal-Mart could very well end up taking damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, and we will see about those low prices.

Looking at the case of Mr. Fass and Mr. Darnell tells me the amount of hate Wal-Mart has for persons with disabilities. Wal-Mart spent a large amount of money on attorneys, fines and commercials surrounding that particular case, money it could have saved if it had an iota of respect for Federal law, and simply hired the two workers. Both men were very capable of performing the job well, they actually wanted to work for Wal-Mart, and they wanted the jobs badly enough to fight for them. What better employee could Wal-Mart have wanted? I think that Wal-Mart could have taken the money it spent on the lawsuit, fines and commercials, and spent it on training for persons with disabilities, or even on more of its “low prices.”

Unfortunately, America’s large corporations are slow to learn that just because a person has a disability in their eyes does not mean she is incapable of doing anything. While you see persons with disabilities in the workplace more than you might think you do, persons who are deaf or hearing impaired have a noticeable disability, one that employers show continued ignorance of. I wonder if fear of someone different will be as much of a hurdle for workers with disabilities in the future.

United Airlines kept a deaf mechanic at bay for five years because of its inflexibility, discrimination and fear of someone different than the “norm.” United gave “reason” after “reason” for not hiring John Sprague, keeping him from the job he had dreamed of for years. It took Judge George A. O’Toole Jr., and a fine of $320,000 to change United’s mind on the subject of hiring John, who commented, “This is a great victory for everyone who has a disability.” (The Boston Globe, 2002)

John Sprague used lip reading, notes and speech to communicate with his colleagues during the court case. He flew airplanes as a teenager, and fixed planes at Taunton Airport in 1986. The fact that he can’t hear has not gotten in his way. In 1997, United hired him as a line mechanic at Logan Airport, but weeks later a senior executive at UAL “rescinded” the offer. John was moved to a maintenance shop in San Francisco, despite the discrimination lawsuit he filed after being removed from his job at Logan.

For almost a year, John commuted each week to the West Coast. He faxed pictures to his two daughters when he couldn’t come home to be with them. He finally decided to take a job as a mechanic for AirTran at Logan, and kept it until it cut its staff two years ago. After that, John worked as a landscaper and a carpenter while waiting for the court’s decision on his case. (The Boston Globe, 2002)

When the court’s decision came, Judge O’Toole said, “United’s shifting explanation of its reasons for withdrawing the job offer undermines United’s credibility and suggests that the company simply did not want to employ a deaf line mechanic.” United responded by saying that it was only concerned about its employees’ safety, and “We don’t think we violated any laws or policies. At United, we were very disappointed in the outcome of the case.” John’s attorney said, “This is the quintessential ADA case, United Airlines made assumptions about John Sprague because of his disability, and those assumptions were wrong.” (The Boston Globe, 2002)

I’m not sure why companies are concerned about having an employee with a disability working for them. It crossed my mind that the company might feel liable for the employee’s well being, but then; the numbers of persons with disabilities in America regularly rises because previously able-bodied people have accidents that disable them in some way, even among the leadership of a company. Perhaps they are concerned about money; yet there is no study that shows that persons with disabilities have more accidents on the job than anyone else.

John Sprague can hear speech, but cannot distinguish the words. With a digital hearing aid, John can detect a “significant range of sounds, including airplane warnings and irregular engine noises.” He is experienced at airplane mechanical work, he sees the job as his dream job, and he has a family to give him incentive to show up for work when he might feel like calling in sick. I can’t find a single reason why United shouldn’t be pleased to have John working for it. Unfortunately there is a case similar to this with one of America’s largest aircraft builders as well.

The Boeing Corporation fought a case in court against two of its workers who experienced hearing loss by saying they were getting old. The worker’s jobs involved work that brought them in the vicinity of stamping presses, riveting machines and other loud machinery over a period of decades. Boeing was ordered to pay permanent partial disability benefits to both of the workers. (The Associated Press, 2002)

Boeing fought the judgment, saying that some of the hearing loss the workers were experiencing was because of their age. Boeing wanted the award reduced, but the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals, and the state’s highest court rejected Boeing’s appeal. Justice Charles Johnson wrote, “A worker’s age is irrelevant to establishing the existence and extent of a worker’s disability, and the median-based allocation method cannot be used to refute the existence or extent of an individual’s disability.”

Boeing attorneys felt that without some form of statistical model of hearing loss, it is nearly impossible to divide deafness due to work related reasons, and hearing loss due to aging. Without such a statistical model, attorneys for Boeing felt that Boeing would have to pay for hearing loss that it shouldn’t have to. The court disapproved of the “long-standing” practice of ignoring hearing tests conducted by employers, and said that without information from those tests an employer often has no way to challenge claims like these. (The Associated Press, 2002)

I think that Boeing had reason to pursue a case like this because it is financially prudent for it to not pay for hearing loss it is not responsible for. I also think that Boeing was being inflexible and presenting anti-disability sentiment by not working with the situation more thoroughly before taking the case to court. Large companies like Boeing attempt to deal with workers in generic, mass-standards ways; ways that don’t work with disability because every person with a disability is disabled in a unique way. You cannot place hearing loss, or any other disability, into a general-statistics model.

Wal-Mart, United Airlines and Boeing are three examples of large companies going through a process of learning about disabled workers; an inflexible, negative and often discriminatory process. These companies push every button they can in order to get the way they perceive disability justified, at the expense of persons with disabilities, money, and Federal law concerning persons with disabilities. Money seems to be the bottom line for companies like Wal-Mart, United Airlines and Boeing; they don’t seem to have much concern for the people involved with them. From a human rights perspective, Wal-Mart, United Airlines and Boeing will either change, or remain on a list of employers that must be forced to recognize the civil rights of persons with disabilities.

I think that cases like the ones that Wal-Mart, United Airlines and Boeing were involved in are one way that persons with disabilities teach organizations about themselves and how to work with them. The cases were in the public eye for the duration of the events, and corporations other than Wal-Mart, United Airlines and Boeing will hopefully learn from their mistakes. It is almost always easier to work with someone who has a disability than against them. It is almost always better for the company and the worker with a disability to discuss any problems they may have than to spend money and time fighting in court.

Persons with disabilities teach employers about themselves by their very presence in work situations. Every person with a disability is a unique person with a unique degree of his disability or disabilities. Interaction with employers is perhaps the best way for employers to find out what it is like to have disabled employees. Persons with disabilities who work teach employers about the abilities they have as well as teach them about their disabilities. Showing employers that we can do jobs offered to us is increasingly a matter of pride for persons with disabilities. Persons with disabilities also teach employers by fighting for their rights, showing employers that they want to work and are willing to do what is needed to have jobs.

Persons with disabilities also teach themselves. The process of learning that we can do work in some form, that we don’t have to sit on Social Security for the rest of our lives, and that we can reach for our dreams, is an individual process for each and every person with a disability who decides to work. We teach ourselves on the job by learning more and more about what we are capable of in relation to the work we are doing. We teach ourselves the extent that we are able to participate in society and work; it is a process of self-discovery that more persons with disabilities will pursue, given work and other opportunities that many nondisabled persons take for granted. These opportunities include housing, accessibility concerning public places, events and transportation.

The learning we do about ourselves doesn’t guarantee that organizations will learn through and about us, but if we don’t learn about ourselves there will be no learning on the organization’s part. Kazuo Inamori, president of Kyocera, an advanced ceramics technology that is used in electronics, says:

“Whether it is research and development, company management, or any other aspect of business, the active force is “people.” And people have their own will, their own mind, and their own way of thinking. If the employees themselves are not sufficiently motivated to challenge the goals of growth and technological development…there will simply be no growth, no gain in productivity, and no technological development.”