hearing loss and employment
June 2006
Have you
heard? New research indicates that there may be a relationship between
your hearing and your income. A new survey by the Better Hearing Institute
shows that working Americans who ignore their hearing problems are losing
at least $100 billion a year in earnings. The average amount of income
lost by working people who don't get hearing aids ranges from $1,000 a
year-for those with mild hearing loss-to $12,000 a year for those with
profound hearing loss. However, on average, the income decline due to
hearing loss can be cut in half by wearing a hearing aid, the research
revealed.
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July 2006
A familiar
face on the Rochester Institute of Technology campus is pursuing his
dream, one that makes him a rarity: becoming a police officer despite a
hearing loss. Anthony Wallace, an All-American wrestler when he attended
RIT, had worked as a campus safety officer there since 2003. His last day
of work was June 30. He flew to Alaska two days later and was sworn in as
a police officer in Hoonah, Alaska, on July 6.
Full Story
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A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower
court ruling that UPS Inc. violated anti-discrimination laws by
automatically barring the deaf and hearing-impaired from driving parcel
delivery trucks. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with U.S.
District Judge Thelton Henderson's 2004 ruling that the Atlanta-based
company's practices breach the Americans with Disabilities Act. Henderson,
in a class-action case representing as many as 1,000 would-be drivers,
ruled that the hearing impaired should "be given the same opportunities
that a hearing applicant would be given to show that they can perform the
job of package-car driver safely and effectively."
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April
2007
A federal appeals court in San Francisco announced
today it will reconsider whether United Parcel Service Inc. can
automatically bar deaf drivers from driving lightweight delivery trucks.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a bid by the Atlanta-based
company for a rehearing of the case by an expanded panel of 15 judges. The
larger panel will review a decision in which three judges of the court
said last year the company can't bar all deaf drivers from driving
lightweight vans that weigh 10,000 pounds or less, known as package cars.
Full
Story
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August 2007
The extra energy expended on overcoming hearing
problems takes its toll on hearing-impaired employees. This may explain why
hearing-impaired employees are likely to take more sick-days than their
colleagues with normal hearing. However, a few common sense precautions have
been shown to help hearing-impaired employees perform as reliably as their
colleagues. Hearing problems can wear on a hearing-impaired individual’s
mental health. A Dutch survey among people in the workplace found that
hearing-impaired employees are five times more likely than their co-workers
with normal hearing to experience stress so severe that they must take
sick-days.
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December 2007
A federal appeals court ordered a San Francisco
judge on Friday to reconsider his ruling requiring United Parcel Service to
give its deaf employees a chance to compete for jobs as drivers of small
delivery trucks. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 13-2 that
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson had used the wrong standard in his
2004 decision that UPS was discriminating against deaf people with safe
driving records by refusing to consider them for commercial driving jobs.
Henderson allowed the plaintiffs to show that they were qualified for the
jobs based on their driving records, and failed to require them to show that
they were capable of driving delivery trucks, the court said. The court
didn't say how that should be done, but stressed that it was still up to the
company to prove its policy is a legitimate safety measure.
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January 2008
The federal government is becoming an increasingly
unwelcome place for people with disabilities to work, the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission said Jan. 15. Employment of people with disabilities
hit its lowest point in 22 years in fiscal 2006, the EEOC said. Data for
2007 is not yet available. The federal government employed 23,490 disabled
people in fiscal 2006, which is about 0.97 percent of the federal work
force. At the peak in 1994, 1.24 percent of the federal work force was
disabled. At the lowest point in 1984, about 0.96 percent of the federal
work force was disabled. At the same time, harassment complaints have
steadily increased since 2003. Disabled employees filed 1,393 harassment
complaints in fiscal 2003 and filed 1,602 complaints in 2006. What’s more,
most managers don’t seem to understand how to accommodate disabled people.
Many agencies haven’t made hiring them a priority, and an obtuse hiring
process may discourage applicants, the EEOC said in its report. The
government is not living up to its obligations, EEOC Commissioner Christine
Griffin said.
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