 |
| emilykbaker, Flikr Creative Commons |
Consider the facts:
- The state's hiring of people with disabilities has gone way down.
- The state's count of workers with disabilities has gone way up.
How is this possible?
This blog reveals the procedural
magic that is swelling the ranks of "disabled" in state service, without
actually hiring PWD's. In the Wizard of
Oz, Toto pulled back the curtain, revealing how the Wizard's deception was run. The purpose of this blog is to show how the
state's disability employment deception is run.
What is it Like to be a Person with a Disability Trying to
Find a Job For Which You are Capable?
 |
| billsoPHOTO, Flikr Creative Commons |
In other words, as a person with
a disability (PWD) you don't stand much of a chance being hired, even if you
are the best qualified and most skilled applicant.
California has the highest
number of people with disabilities in the U.S.(2) and one of the lowest rates
of employment for those who are disabled. (3)
The Great State of California is
not an easy place to get a job if you have a disability.
In California people with
disabilities face severe discrimination when seeking work---essentially, they
face compulsory unemployment. (4)
No one says it, they just don't
act on your application or resume. Abled
bodied friends get hired, but for you--not so much.
What Does the Law Say?
.jpg) |
| David Goehring, Flikr Creative Commons |
- Qualified individuals with a disability shall be employed in state service (CGC 19230(b)).
- Each state organization must establish an effective program to hire PWD's (CGC 19232) with goals and timetables (CGC 19233(c)) to increase their hiring (CGC 19234).
- These shall be reported to the Governor and Legislature each year (CGC 19234), and shall be monitored by CalHR (CGC 19236), (click here to view these laws).
Good Intentions
In 1989 the State of California
developed an alternative hiring process for workers with disabilities, called
the Limited Examination and Appointment Program (LEAP).
LEAP can be used in place of the civil-service appointment process, when
hiring workers with disabilities. (5)
 |
| arvind grover, Flikr Creative Commons |
Bad Outcomes
Unfortunately, the state is
doing just the opposite of what it's own laws and employment goals require:
- Hiring rates of people with disabilities has plummeted 59% in the last five years, from 7.2% in 2009 to 3.0% in 2013. This severe negative trend is seen in the chart below.
- In all of the last 10 years the state reported more workers with disabilities than they hired. The question is, how did they come up with more PWD's than they hired? Herein lies the shell game.
How the State's Shell Game Works
The California definition of
disability is more liberal than the definition contained in the Americans with
Disabilities Act of 1990, which requires a person's disability to cause a
"substantial limitation" to one or more major life activities (PublicLaw 101-336, see also here,
and also www.ada.gov). California only requires a physical or mental
condition cause a "limitation" to one or more major life activities (CGC
§12926.1(c)).
As people grow older, they
acquire disabilities merely as a function of aging. These can include developing the need for
insulin, starting to wear glasses, or perhaps they experience the onset of arthritis. Conditions such as these can be a limitation
to one or more major life activities, and thus they are rightfully seen as a
disability. This fact presents a
tempting opportunity for individual state organizations to "cheat"
with regard to workers with disabilities.
Rather than hiring people with a
disability, who want to work for the state; instead, state organizations can
merely--and legally--reclassify some of their existing workers as now being
called "disabled". Thus, so
long as no one snoops to closely, you create the appearance of having hired
some PWD's, and thus fulfilling the mandate of the state to hire people with
disabilities.
Look at the suspicious examples
below. Notice the percentage of PWD
employees jumps dramatically in a single year, or two or three years as the case may be.
These show as spikes in the graph, on the red line which signifies the
percentage of PWD employees across the 10 year period. To the right in yellow boxes your attention is drawn to any increase of 30% or more in a given year.
Want to see everyone's data? Click
here to see what the chart and figure show for just about every state organization (at least those reported on). As you will see, apparent cheating isn't limited just to the six examples shown below! You can also see the racial composition of each of these state organizations.
- Did the Inspector General really have two years of amazing hiring of PWD's, when most years there is little growth? (2009, 2012)
- Did Audits really more than triple their number of PWD's in a single year (2005), and double them in another? (2009)
Look at the Legislative Counsel. Nine of ten years the PWD percentage goes down. Yet in one amazing year it increased 167%. (2008)
George Hodan, public domain
- CalTrans shows a negative trend nine out of ten years, and then had an amazing year with an almost 140% increase in the rate of PWD employment.
- The watch dog of disability hiring, CalHR, has eight bad years, and then two years of amazing growth. Did they hire, or did they reclassify?
- Currently the state's rate of hiring of PWD's is rapidly declining.
- Currently the number of PWD's reported by the state is increasing.
- Mathematically, this is impossible, unless reclassification is going on.
Thus the state's message seems to be:
- If you have a disability we will not include you in state service.
- However we will create an appearance of including a growing number of people with disabilities.
- We will do this by reclassifying already-existing workers, calling some of them "Disabled" from now on.
How the State Could Achieve A 52% PWD Employment Rate?
About 52% of the U.S. population
age three and older use corrective lenses, either glasses or contacts. (7) Thus, under California's definition of
disability (assuming vision loss sufficient to require corrective lenses limits
the persons' ability to perform one or more major life activity), the state
could quickly and vastly exceed its own goal of employing at least 16.6% PWD's
in the state workforce. All that needs
to be done is a quick count of state workers who wear glasses or contact
lenses. This should produce at least a 50%
rate of PWD employment.
Do the Right Thing
The alternative is to do the
right, honest, and virtuous thing: Make the directors of state departments ramp
up hiring of people with disabilities, and hold them personally accountable in
their yearly review. Give CalHR's
enforcement unit some power and a clear mandate to investigate state
organizations whose disability hiring rate is low.
I would argue it is the state's
affirmative duty to correct for the discrimination PWD's face in private
industry, by preferentially hiring people with disabilities. Doing so would help to erase the unlawful
rejection workers with disabilities face when they seek work.
This is where you take action by
emailing the governor or the secretary of GovOPs (who oversees CalHR and the State Personnel Board), asking them to read this blog and then
take action.
Contact Governor Brown: https://govnews.ca.gov/gov39mail/mail.php
Please cite this blog as: Nelson, Eric L. (2015). Disability Counts & The State's Shell Game. Trends in State Work, http://trendsinstatework.blogspot.com/2015/05/disability-counts-states-shell-game.html
ENDNOTES
(1) As of June 11, 2014 the unemployment rate of
non-disabled people is 7.1%, and for disabled it is 13.2%. Therefore, ((13.2 / 7.1) -1) * 102 = 86%. Data from: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
News Release June 21, 2014, USDL-14-1076.
(2) United States Census Bureau (2010). Disability among the working age population:
2008 and 2009. Washington, D.C.: USCB.
(3) Erickson, W., Lee, C., & von Schrader, S.
(2014). 2012 Disability Status Report:
California. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Employment and Disability Institute(EDI). See table "Employment: Ages 21-64",
p. 8. There are only 13 states with
higher rates of unemployment, for people with disabilities.
(4) Russell, Marta (2002). What disability civil rights cannot do:
Employment and political economy.
Disability & Society 17(2):117-135.
See p. 21.
(5) LEAP manual, section 1.1.
(6) 2012 Annual Census, p. 15.
(7) Vital & Health Statistics Series 10, No.
145 (1984, February). Washington, D.C.:
United States Department of Human and Health Services. http://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/12584
