Projektart: Gefördertes Projekt Studie
Vergleichende Untersuchung von Strategien und Praktiken am Arbeitsplatz, die der Diskriminierung entgegenwirken

It has been suggested that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is an international as well as national milestone in human rights and effectuates a long line of international declarations (Herr, 1993). This proposed twelve month Distinguished Research Fellowship will support a comparative study of workplace policies and practices that contribute to employment non-discrimination for persons with disabilities. In the U. S., the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) came into effect on July 26, 1992; a comparable piece of civil rights legislation for persons with disabilities in Britain has recently been passed, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA). Although the ADA has had some direct and relatively immediate impact on some aspects of corporate behaviour, advocates in the U.S. continue to point to the high unemployment rate of persons with disabilities as a sign that more aggressive intervention needs to occur to educate the workplace, and clearly identify models that will make a decisive difference in the hiring and retention of people with disabilities. For the U.S. legislation, complaints about alleged discrimination under the employment provisions are filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In the four years since the employment provisions have been in effect, the EEOC has received 68,203 complaints related to alleged workplace disability discrimination. Approximately half (51%) of these claims have been related to the area of alleged unlawful discharge of a person with a disability. It would appear from this data that persons who are already employed are those who are seeking protection under the employment provisions of the ADA, and therefore that this is a place where employers need education and support to overcome policies and procedures that may contribute to discrimination in the workplace. It has also been suggested that simular such use of the legislation to protect current job incumbents may be seen in Britain when the implementation of the employment provisions of the DDA come into effect (James & Bruyere, 1995). The purpose of this study will be to assess the workplace policies and practices which minimize discrimination under civil rights legislation for persons with disabilities in all facets of the employment process. The focus will be on human resource practices in recruitment, pre-employment screening and testing, disciplinary process, layoff and terminations. For purposes of identifying sociocultural, economic, and health policy factors that impact workplace practice, a comparative assessment of human resource practices in Britain will also be done. The objectives of the research will be to: identify human resource policies and practices in the U.S. that contribute to disability non-discrimination in employment and heighten the likelihood of hiring and retention of persons with disabilities; identify sociocultural, economic, and health policy factors which may also impact disability related issues in the workplace, by comparing the U.S. and the British experience under related pieces of disability rights legislation; and from the results of this research, provide recommendations for workplace policies and procedures that heighten the likelihood of nondiscrimination in employment for persons with disabilities. The results of this research will be disseminated in several forms as follows: articles in scholarly journals; a draft of a proposed module to insert to curriculum for use in human resource academic degree granting programs in the U.S. and Britain; and presentations at national and international human resource professional conferences. An additional outcome of this research should also be enhanced understanding between the U.S. and Britain of each country's human resource practices as they relate to lessening employment discrimination for persons with disabilities.