Opinions
For the Disabled, Employment Choices in a Recession Are Limited
The author writes about the challenges of living with a disability: Limited work experience, employer bias, and other uphill battles.
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In this photo taken on Oct. 31, 2008, Heidi Latsky, left, Catherine Long, center, and Christina Briggs are seen through the legs of Lawrence Carter-Long, who cerebral palsy, which affects his legs and his gait.
The one repeating mantra that my parents taught me since I was a little kid, after I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age two, was that life will never be easy. And while other children have been moved to different schools and were put in specialized classes, I was not. For me, getting through school was a constant battle of adjustment between the usual social groups, in conjunction with being a person with a disability who is also an ethnic minority and gay. My parents’ mantra never seemed truer as I went through school. When I graduated from college in 2008 I was preparing to do what others in my age group were doing: Find employment. Unlike everyone else though, this task would prove to be much more difficult for someone like me.
In the current economic crisis, everyone has to sacrifice to get through it. Whether it’s time, money, or personal freedom, sacrifice is a requirement to maintain livelihood. For most students in my situation, just getting my bachelor’s degree could be considered a sizable achievement, as the education gap for disabled students between high school and post-secondary education is wide. The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study estimates [PDF] that 10.8 percent of undergraduates in 2 and 4 year institutions have a disability. But in the 2005 National Longitudinal Transition Study report [PDF], nearly 70 percents of parents didn’t expect their disabled children to graduate from a 4 year university compared to the 88 percent of their peers in the general population who did.
Because of the recession and the increased cost of higher education, some students have to work full time to pay for school. And yes, it’s making the task of going to college just that much more daunting. But in my situation, and for thousands of others like me, the issue at hand is more than just about how we’re going to pay tuition. I’ve never had a job. Not summer employment, not part-time at a coffee shop, and not even at McDonald’s. At 24, the idea of this sounds ridiculous, but for many young people growing up with disabilities, getting work experience is challenging if not impossible while attending school. Even though I’ve looked for work like everyone else, lack of understanding, cooperation, and adaptation coupled with tough financial times makes the prospect of hiring disabled people more challenging. But I think that employers, and oftentimes the American workforce, seem to forget that we, as much as anyone else, have obligations, bills, and tuition to pay.
Many of my friends are quick to assume that I, as a triple minority in the modern United States, would have no trouble finding work, since the equal employment opportunity laws, which prohibit discrimination under race, sexuality, or disability, are printed in visible places in nearly every business. But while the words exist, few businesses enforce the rules. Many employers do not know of ways they can effectively employe disabled people, who, many times, are just as qualified as their able-bodied counterparts. The Schedule A Hiring Authority like Veterans Preference, is a special code created to give disabled job seekers an extra edge when competing for a federal position. The code has been around for years, but many agencies don’t use it because they don’t know what it is. The idea behind the Hiring Authority is that someone with a severe physical or mental disability might be adversely affected by standard competitive hiring practices, so these authorities extend an additional bit of assistance for those with disabilities when they are applying for federal jobs.
"[A Schedule A Hiring Authority] is intended to help people who need help and have difficulty securing employment because of a disability,” says my friend Matthew Swanson, a human resources manager for a federal agency. “Unfortunately, the laws are vague on what qualifies as a disability and we are restricted in how we can determine if a person’s disability qualifies. What this means is that people with almost no need for additional employment consideration are using the vague loopholes to get a non-competitive advantage. So, for every one person who might actually need the additional consideration, there will be four or five who don’t, making it less likely the Schedule A will even matter to the one who really needed it.”
Many employers also choose not to hire disabled workers because they believe adapting the workplace will be too expensive, even though much of it can be done for under $500—if not for free—just by working creatively.
Living and working with a disability is just not a situation that people often think about. Consider if you will, that in conjunction with employer uncertainty, the very act of transportation makes everything even more frustrating. I’m from Cary, N.C., but because the city isn’t built for public transit, those without cars are out of luck. In fact, most American cities outside of a large metropolitan area have similar challenges. People with disabilities that prevent them from driving are forced to look for work in big cities with accessible public transit. But large cities also bring the problems associated with increased higher cost of living, disabled housing access, and increased insurance premiums. It’s not as simple as looking where you want for anything that’s available.
While the economic situation is forcing everyone to reassess their lives, I believe special consideration needs to be made aware for the thousands of students in my position.
I’m currently finishing my Master’s degree in creative writing overseas, and when I return to the United States in August, I’ll have to go through the process of looking for a job just like everyone else. But unlike everyone else, I have all these things and more to consider. Hiring disabled people is certainly more costly, but now more than ever, but it’s time for America to put its money where its mouth is.
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