I think the ADA has done a lot of good. All of American society is more focused on finding ways to adapt jobs to disabled people.
However, prejudice against the disabled was different from prejudice against minorities and women. Most people felt good about hiring disabled people. E.g., in 1973 – 75 (long before the ADA), a partially deaf woman worked for me, and my organization had a small lunchroom run by a legally blind man and his wife. (He could see a little.) Employees were happy (if they even thought about it) that disabled people could be part of our work force. I never heard the kind of bigoted comments that one used to hear about women and minorities.
And, the ADA has a downside.[ul][]Any program that takes decision-making ability away from those directly involved will generally result in worse decisions.[]As was pointed out on this thread, employers may make bad decisions, for fear of how the ADA might be interpreted – a sensible concern, in my opinion.[]The ADA has been extended far beyond what most of us expected it to do. Perhaps the sponsors intentionally wrote a broad law, or it may be an untended consequence.[]In particular, the idea of giving more test time to “disabled” students makes little sense in theory E.g. from my wife’s school: It seems nice to give a medical student extra time because she has a reading problem, but when she’s actually faced with a critically injured patient, God won’t give the patient extra time to live, while she slowly figures out what to do.The extra time makes even less sense in practice. Students who choose to get good, tough lawyers can take advantage. As a practical matter, it’s easier for a school to just give the extra time than to fight a lawsuit.[/ul]
It would seem to me that whenever a person is forced to hire the less of two qualified people (be it due to race, disability, or the fact that he’s the CFO’s nephew), the company, and all its employees will suffer as a result.
If this is how you came to your “resolved” state, I’m going to ask you to back that assertion up with a factoid or two. Unless there weren’t a lot of Americans in your linked thread, I don’t have to go very far to find examples to counter that opinion.
While I actually agree with you, it’s not based on your evidence, which is purely anecdotal.
[quote] And, the ADA has a downside.[ul][li]Any program that takes decision-making ability away from those directly involved will generally result in worse decisions.[/li][/quote]
I’ll applaud any program that takes the decision-making ability away from the store owner who would just as soon not have a wheelchair in his shop, so the stairs are the only way in the door.
[quote] [li]As was pointed out on this thread, employers may make bad decisions, for fear of how the ADA might be interpreted – a sensible concern, in my opinion.[/li][/quote]
That would be the fault of the employer, not the disabled person. There are ADA websites, publications, hotlines, etc., to get any question answered.
[quote] [li]The ADA has been extended far beyond what most of us expected it to do. Perhaps the sponsors intentionally wrote a broad law, or it may be an untended consequence.[/li][/quote]
There are some who think it hasn’t gone far enough. George W. Bush is one of them.
[quote] [li]In particular, the idea of giving more test time to “disabled” students makes little sense in theory E.g. from my wife’s school: It seems nice to give a medical student extra time because she has a reading problem, but when she’s actually faced with a critically injured patient, God won’t give the patient extra time to live, while she slowly figures out what to do.[/li][/quote]
What does a reading problem like dyslexia, for instance, have to do a doctor figuring out how to treat a trauma patient? Besides, maybe God has a bit more patience than you seem to have.
[quote]
**[li]The extra time makes even less sense in practice. Students who choose to get good, tough lawyers can take advantage. As a practical matter, it’s easier for a school to just give the extra time than to fight a lawsuit.[/ul] **[/li][/QUOTE]
Yes, they could be covering their behinds. They could also be doing the right thing because they give a damn. While we’re on the subject, I’m going to have to ask for a cite on this test taking issue. I’m guessing it’s not quite as broad as you would have us believe. While I can see giving someone with dyslexia a bit more time to take a written test, I don’t know why a paraplegic would need more.
ADA was pretty much the only domestic policy success his father’s administration ever had. In the link provided, W is attempting to burnish his father’s legacy while reminding disabled voters who their friends supposedly are come this fall.
I think that many people have abused the ADA. I used to work at a law firm in the labor and employment department. We spent a good deal of time defending companies against ADA suites. In particular I can remember cases where people tried to claim such things as obesity, acid-reflux, dubious back injuries, depression, attention deficit disorder, and a whole host of other ailments as “disabilities.” In many cases the company would offer an accommodation of some type, but the employee didn’t feel it was enough. The companies usually won all of these cases on summary judgment, but even going that far might cost a $50,000 or more in legal fees.
My major problem with the ADA is that it is so vague as to what constitutes a “disability” and what constitutes a “reasonable accommodation.” It has cost businesses, and their shareholders, a tremendous amount of money to litigate the issues in order to have the courts establish some guidelines.
—I’ll applaud any program that takes the decision-making ability away from the store owner who would just as soon not have a wheelchair in his shop, so the stairs are the only way in the door.—
Why? I mean, I too think people like that are nasty and meanspirited, but I don’t see the rationale behind forcing them to accomodate people. It’s their store. If you think that the wheelchair bound don’t have enough accessible stores, then by all means, start one for them yourself. You are just as responsible for not providing a wheelchair accessible store as any store owner: they don’t suddenly become more liable just because they built the particular sort of store they wanted to build.
Making the one store owner solely liable for the financial burden of installing a ramp or other such things just isn’t just.
Having companies who want to be disabled-friendly pay for being less competitive (please, no inane discussion about how such activity would fill a market need and become successful, history and market forces simply don’t bear that out).
Having the government (i.e., taxpayers) pay for disabilities (lets not forget the implementation costs – I can just imagine the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of extra employees necessary in order install ramps in every store and supporting people who are otherwise unemployable due to people’s prejudices against the disabled)
Having businesses integrate disabled-friendly policies as time goes on (grandfathering in existing buildings and employees), eventually leveling the playing field (this is my understanding of how the ADA works)
No, it doesn’t. The fact that there will always be some abuse doesn’t mean we should pass vague laws to encourage more either. The ADA goes well beyond helping those with obvious disabilities, wheelchairs etc…, and invites nonsense like claiming ADD as a disability. (In the case I am thinking of the worker claimed he needed a private office because he was unable to work in a cube. Why? Because the people walking by distracted him from his work. Acid-reflux? The man claimed that the travel involved with his job precluded him from eating the special diet he needed to control his heartburn. Obesity? The attendant at a self-storage facility claimed that she should not have to show potential customers the storage units because it hurt her feet to stand for more than 5 min., she was 5’3" aprox. 220lbs.)
Ummmm, who do you think is paying for it? Do you think that businesses just absorb the costs of compliance? I think not. I think we are all paying for it in terms of higher prices etc… That isn’t to say that government programs would cost less, but the ADA is a very expensive public policy.
While there are some exceptions for small companies, I do not believe that as a rule exsisting buildings or employees are grandfathered.
So…you concede that complying with the ADA will be very costly? So costly that it will be too much of a burden for the State and the taxpayers? If this is so, how do you expect small businesses to handle the costs themselves?
Then there’s the law of unintended consquences. Here in Canada, there are a lot of businesses that have exactly 11 employees. Why? Because once you hit 12, you have to meet a whole host of federal regulations for accomodating disabled people. After 12 employees, you have to have wheelchair ramps, handicapped-accessible washrooms, etc.
Thus, we have an effective brake on growth. Worthwhile companies with good products that could serve more people do not grow, because the small business owners either don’t want to deal with all the federal regulations, or they simply can’t afford it.
Here are some of the drawbacks of the ADA according to the Cato Institute:
Further in the article, Cato has this to say:
I find this quote also interesting:
So while most arguments for the ADA center around people in wheelchairs, blind people, or deaf people, in reality most of the claims involve people with minor afflictions and/or physical problems that simply make them unsuitable for certain kinds of work.
The thing is, some people are not disabled, but nonetheless are not suitable for certain occupations. If you have dyslexia, perhaps neurosurgery is not the occupation for you. If you have back problems, perhaps you should not work in a field that requires heavy lifting.
When I was young, you often used to hear stories like this: “Yes, my husband used to be a construction worker. But then he threw his back out, and couldn’t work in the field any more. So he went back to school and now he’s an HR manager.”
That story today is going to be more like this: “My husband works in construction. Oh, he threw his back out five years ago, so they had to find him another job in the company. So now he does office work.”
Note that that may be office work that he is ill-suited for, and which the company doesn’t really need.
So we have three main economic costs associated with the ADA. The first is regulatory compliance - installing ramps, handicap-accessible washrooms, etc. Included in that is the cost of the accounting and inspections and paperwork involved. Then there is the cost of defending against those 45,000 complaints. Finally, there is the economic cost of hiring or keeping employed people who are not suited for the work and who are not as efficient as others.
How much does this all cost the country? From the article:
So the conference of Mayors says that the cost just to cities is 2.2 billion a year. But that’s a tiny fraction of what private businesses pay. And those costs are just for things like infrastructure, and don’t count the economic cost of lowered efficiency and legal costs. I have seen estimates for the total cost of the ADA that exceed 100 billion per year. That is a HUGE amount of money - 1/4 the budget of the U.S. military, for example, and about seven times the budget of NASA.
But still, it would be worth it if it helps disabled people find jobs, right? Problem is, it hasn’t changed a thing. From the article:
So, since the ADA was enacted, employment of disabled persons has gone down by 2%.
Then there is the effect on the culture, and I think December is on to something there. There’s nothing like a government law that separates people into groups and gives one group special advantages to help fracture society. Now, if you see a disabled person working in a company, rather than thinking, “Hey, that’s great! That company treats people really well!” You’re more likely to think, “Lucky for the ADA, or these bastards would never have hired him.” Or, “That guy’s only got a job because of the ADA”. So you wind up with resentment and hostility. I’m not sure if that is worth the side benefits.
So in the end, what do we have? A huge bureaucracy, a ‘tax’ of as much as 100 billion dollars a year, all kinds of distortions in the marketplace (like companies freezing their workforce under the limits) and in the end, no extra disabled people in the workforce. Sure sounds like the success of the ADA is at least debatable.
And if you want horror stories of ADA abuses, the article is full of them, plus some interesting information about how the ADA may actually be counter-productive (i.e. raising the cost of mass transit, which poor blind people rely on).
“All”? That’s a pretty broad & definitive (and, IMHO, fantastical) statement. Do you have any sort of cite to back it up?
It was, perhaps, a different sort of predjudice than was/is endured by women & ethnic minorities, but that doesn’t lessen it.
You’re correct (in my experience) that people generally don’t use slurs like “cripple” & “gimp”. Instead, they might simply gawk, or make comments that, even though they were meant to be innocuous, show a certain bias against you. (“Gee, I wish I would be allowed to ride around like that all day! You sure have it easy!”) Maybe they’ll automatically assume that, due to the fact that you’re in a wheelchair, you have a mental deficiency.
Dyslexia or some other problem that causes difficulty when reading doesn’t (as far as I know, but IANAD) cause a person to have difficulty with decision-making processes. It seems to me that you’ve equated dyslexia with some sort of mental retardation/slowness.
See what I mean about how one’s biases & false notions about a person’s disability may lead to one drawing invalid conclusion about said person with disability?
Of course, please correct me if I’m wrong about my assumption.
How well you perform on the test is supposed to be indicative of your knowledge in the subject and your ability to use that knowledge. If reading speed is not a factor in determining your knowledge and ability to use that knowledge, then why should the test be timed? If reading speed is a factor, then why should a disabled person be given more time? Either time is important, in which case the disabled should have to perform under the same conditions as everyone else, or time is not a factor and the whole population should not be timed.
This reminds me of the golfer, Casey Martin (sp?) who wanted to use a cart to play in the PGA. I always felt that he should not be allowed to use the cart unless everyone else was also allowed to use a cart. You wouldn’t let someone enter the 100yd dash and only run 80yds, why should someone be allowed to use 1.5 hours to take a 1-hour test, or ride a golf course while everyone else walks?
Don’t let this fall into the straw-man trap of condemning extremes, especially when they don’t exist. ADA requires only reasonable accommodation, not absolute accommodation. Certainly absolute accommodation would cause some ridiculous situations, but certain of you are not only claiming that they’re real but that they’re the heart of the meaning of law.
Those of you complaining about costs of implementation? Yes, they exist. So do costs of nonimplementation, both direct and indirect - which certain of you are conveniently not mentioning.
Some of the regulations are vague? Maybe, but there’s a pretty well-established list of specific regulations, and a by-now-lengthy body of legal and administrative precedents to guide specific situations.
Yes, but one man’s reasonable is another man’s extreme. That is one of the major problems with the implementation of the ADA. Is it reasonable to raise or lower a desk? Sure. Is it reasonable to allow someone to work from home three days a week because of some medical condition? Maybe yes, maybe no. Want to go to court to find out?
At least according to Sam’s figures the costs of implementation may be far beyond the cost of nonimplementation.
Maybe now there is a wide body of legal precedent, but all of those decisions came at great cost, and people will continue to file charges (esp. w/ the EEOC where it is free) and baseless lawsuits in hope of a quick settlement.
I don’t know for sure, or even not for sure, but this stopping at 11 employees might be the result of ignorance and fear of change. Maybe those federal regulations wouldn’t be as onerous as they seem to be when considering them prospectively.
As an example of what I mean, California growers used to make their field workers use a short-handled hoe which meant they had to stoop to weed around plants etc. This resulted in a lot of back problems and since farm workers have no workman’s comp, when they couldn’t work they were thrown back on the general charity of the various counties.
Agitation grew for the abolishment of the short hoe which brought down a storm of dire predictions from the corporate growers. Such things as, “We have to have the short hoe so that if someone isn’t working hard and stands up the foreman can see them. Our production will drop and your food prices will go up.”
I’m embarrased to even recount this but our magnificent US Senator George Murphy, when asked to comment, said that the short handled hoe wasn’t that much of a problem because most of the field workers were Mexican and therefore didn’t have far to stoop because they were built closer to the ground and were used to stooping anyway. I’m sorry about that, but that’s what the man said. There were other equally brilliant claims and the growers spent large sums for lobbyists and succeeded in delaying adoption of the ban for several years. Then it was finally passed.
Lo and behold, none of the evils of the long hoe materialized and in fact productivity increased. The Los Angeles Times did a follow up story and quoted the CEO of Boswell Farms, at the time the largest corporate grower in the San Joaquin Valley, who said he had been totally wrong and was now “embarassed” at the claims his corporation had made about the matter.
I don’t think that the fact that many Canadian business stop at 11 employees proves much of anything about the ADA or government regulation of business practices in general.
An interesting story, but I am not sure of the relevance here. In the Canadian example you have a situation where adding the 12th employee will result in additional costs. In your CA story the growers were concerned that the new regulation might result in reduced profits. It turns out that the CA growers were wrong, that doesn’t mean the Canadians are wrong.
IMO if in fact there are many businesses that do stop at 11 employees it says quite a bit about the effect of regulation. The business world perceives the burden of compliance with additional regulations as outweighing the benefit of a 12th employee.
You could be right of course. I’m not sure that they stop at 11 because of the effect of regulation or what they think will be the effect of regulation. Sure, one additional employee would probably add more than 1/12 to the overhead. However, most businesses aren’t so finely tuned that they know that they need exactly 1 more employee and no more. What if the businessman or woman makes a real effort at expanding and adds 6 employees? Now the overhead number doesn’t look so bad.
The US experience is jammed with examples of businesses claiming that the addition of employee health insurance, safety regulations, smog control regulations and what have you would completely ruin the US free enterprise system. And business has expanded tremendously after such regulations were put in place. Not because of the regulations but because the economy is able to absorb the costs.
Look, people with disabilities are going to be taken care of somehow. Is it better to have businesses taxed to put them on the dole or to spend a little extra to make provisions so that they can be hired and contribute to the economy? It isn’t an open and shut case either way.
If people have a pressing need for that 12th person, they’ll hire them. Not all businesses react this way.
Economically, what happens is that before the disabilities regulations, adding a 12th person was done when the added productivity from that person offset his wage plus added reasonable profit to the company. But now, the 12th person has to cover his wage, PLUS the added regulatory burden of moving the company into a new category. So the hiring of a 12th person is delayed, or perhaps never happens because that point of productivity gain is never reached.
There are always consequences to regulations that were not considered. There has to be - if economists could predict the exact result of a piece of regulation, they could play the market and get rich. The fact is, you can justify things as much as you want, and sometimes the justification is correct and you should pass a law. But be assured, that law will cause side effects you never thought of. So it’s worth objectively re-evaluating laws a few years down the road. That’s what companies do - if a new idea or plan doesn’t work out, it is dropped.
But in government, so many people stake their campaigns on specific pieces of regulation that they become sacred cows and cannot be killed once they are enacted. Unless the federal government is comprised of omnicient beings, this is a real problem.
In my message above, I provided plenty of examples of what’s wrong with the ADA. It’s hideously expensive, easily abused, and largely ineffective in its primary mission of helping seriously disabled people find work. Instead, it has been turned into a way for people who’s changing physical conditions make them unsuitable for their job stay employed.
In my mind, it is that, IF disabled people deserve certain things to accomodate them, then the burden of providing this must fall on everyone equally, not simply on people who happen to own the particular things that the disabled want.
As was pointed out, if the cost of providing these things is “too expensive” for the government to spread the costs equally via taxing and spending, then it is too expensive to do, period. The costs of enacting legislation are still costs: just because you can impose them all on only some people by fiat doesn’t mean that it’s just (in fact, it’s the opposite of justice).
