Obama orders agencies to increase employment of disabled workers

[The Straight Story]

Obama orders agencies to increase employment of disabled workers
By Elizabeth Newell July 27, 2010

President Obama issued an executive order Monday instructing federal agencies to take steps to increase employment of people with disabilities.

The directive orders agencies to take steps to meet a goal of hiring an additional 100,000 disabled employees over five years that was originally laid out by President Clinton in a July 2000 executive order. "Few steps were taken to implement that executive order in subsequent years," Obama said.

"As the nation's largest employer, the federal government must become a model for the employment of individuals with disabilities," the president wrote in the order. "Executive departments and agencies must improve their efforts to employ workers with disabilities through increased recruitment, hiring and retention of these individuals."

According to the executive order, approximately 54 million Americans are living with disabilities. Obama said the federal government has an important interest in reducing discrimination against such Americans, in eliminating the stigma associated with disability and in encouraging Americans with disabilities to seek employment in the federal workforce.

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=45763&oref=todaysnews

[quiet.american]

1. Fantastic. nt

[Scurrilous]

2. Good news.

K & R :thumbsup:

[MineralMan]

3. Excellent. The government needs to lead the way in this area.

They've gotten a pass for too long on hiring those with disabilities.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. One of the problems is the way the Federal workforce is tracked

The disclosure of race, disabilities, etc is voluntary and not subject to audit. You can say you are a partially disabled Hispanic African American there is no means to challenge it. Informal/local data collection is not allowed and most of the Federal employee database is actually empty in this area.

[mentalsolstice]

4. Yep, as I suspected not a lot of traffic on this thread

USA's disabled are at the end of the line in civil rights and discrimination. Many here on DU don't even want to talk about it. It's so much easier to talk about bigotry against race, religion, gender and sexual orientation.

Two factors figure into the discrimination of the disabled.

1) If I pity you, then you're a lesser person than me, and being around a person I pity makes me uncomfortable. I don't know how to deal with if in the office or in a public situation, such as at the store or at a restaurant. I have a hard time even looking at the disabled person, or at the other extreme I want rush in and save/help/fix them, even though such assistance isn't desired on their part.

2) The hidden disabilities. If I can't see them, then I can deny their existence, or I can go even further and say it's the disabled person's fault, they can control their brain chemistry, cancer, heart disease, etc.

eta: we can K&R as much as we want but this thread will sink faster than the Titanic.