When women desired the right to vote the women’s suffrage movement was born.

When people of color wanted equal rights and treatment under the law the Affirmative Action movement brought around the Civil Rights Act.

The Americans with Disabilities Act forbids discrimination against people with disabilities but it does not set a measurable goal.  Is it time to put a number on paper?

President Obama has proposed a rule  that would require federal contractors to do just that.   Through the Department of Labor, he has suggested a goal of 7% of their work force.

The Labor Department points to the disparity  between people with and without a disability and their involvement in the labor pool.  The unemployment rate for people with a disability is around 13%, or 1 ½ times the rate for people without a disability.  Even more shocking is the data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, which shows that 30.5% of people without a disability are outside of the labor force altogether, not looking for jobs, compared to a staggering 79.2% of people with disabilities.

The Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964.  It prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics.  There are volumes and volumes of definitions that explain the reasoning and the intent of the law.  It wasn’t until the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 that people with disabilities were truly offered the same protections.

When President George H.W. Bush signed the law, he said, “We’ve all been determined to ensure that it gives flexibility, particularly in terms of the timetable of implementation; and we’ve been committed to containing the costs that may be incurred…”  There are currently no real rules on employers, only that they show “good faith” efforts to include people with disabilities in their recruiting and hiring programs.  30 years would seem to say that we’ve been flexible about the timetable, and the current statistics would seem to point at a very low cost to employers.

Bear in mind that the ADA was a clarification of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.  It took us 20 years for President Bush 41 to put the icing on that cake.  Will it take until 2032 for people with disabilities to achieve employment equality?

It would seem that this proposed rule is a kickstart.   It starts with the roughly 200,000 businesses that do over $700 billion worth of contract work with the Federal Government.  This would then create a ripple effect and model for state and private businesses.  Providing specific goals would create a measurable accountability, and according to Patricia Shiu,  Director of Federal Contract Compliance Programs for the Department of Labor, “What gets measured gets done.”

The final number is open to debate.  It could be as high as 13%, or as low as 4%.  7% would be a nice start.  The debate could derail the entire proposal and we could end up with nothing.  Some in Congress are pushing the “Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act”, which would give the majority party of either chamber the power of a veto.  In reality, if a Democrat proclaimed the sky to be blue, someone on the other side would vote for red, and vice-versa.

Deputy Secretary of Labor Seth Harris would seem to state the obvious:  This proposal is a long time coming to finally put some teeth to existing regulations.  It may go a long way towards “assuring that people with disabilities have an opportunity to succeed in the workplace.”  All we ask is the opportunity.

Without a number, how do we measure its success?

Written by VABLN

As a B2B Best Practice resource, The Virginia Business Leadership Network assists employers in recognizing the many benefits of including individuals with disabilities in their workforce.