Friends & Colleagues:
I’m
pleased to share with you OFCCP Director Pat Shiu’s remarks at an event
happening right now in Pittsburgh. More than 120 diverse leaders, advocates and
workers from across Allegheny County have joined us to celebrate the
22nd anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities
Act – how much progress we have made and the work that remains. Today’s
event includes testimonials from students and workers who have benefited from
the ADA and from the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which is enforced by
OFCCP.
We
also heard from the incredible Mike Kinger, General Manager of the Lowe’s
distribution center in Pittston, Pennsylvania. Mike’s 21-year-old son has autism
and had a lot of difficulty finding a job. So, when the senior leadership at
Lowe’s invited Mike to pilot a disability employment program at his center, he
jumped at the chance to make a difference for workers struggling with similar
barriers. Since January of 2009, Mike’s team has hired 62 people with
disabilities at this center – about 10% of the total workforce. In addition,
Mike has collaborated with local disability advocates, the state’s vocational
rehab office and his colleagues to make sure that these workers get the
training, accommodation, support and encouragement they need to be successful
and advance in their jobs.
At
a luncheon before the event, Mike confided in me, “Every time we hire a talented
person with a disability, I feel as though I’ve done something good for my
son.”
The
Pittston model has been replicated at the 13 other Lowe’s distribution centers
across the country resulting in 375 job opportunities for capable people with
disabilities across the country… and counting! It’s an impressive model that
they are sharing with other companies.
Here are Director Shiu’s
remarks:
CELEBRATION OF THE 22nd
ANNIVERSARY OF THE AMERICANS WITH
DISABILITIES ACT – “WHAT THE ADA
MEANS TO YOU AND ME”
CLOSING REMARKS BY PATRICIA A.
SHIU, DIRECTOR
Office of Federal Contract
Compliance Programs w U.S. Department Of
Labor
Community College of Allegheny
County w Foerster Student Service Center
Auditorium
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
w Thursday, July 26, 2012
w 1:00 – 3:00 PM
(Pat was introduced by Amaris
Whitaker, a graduate student with a disability at Carnegie Mellon University and
an assistant to the Pittsburgh City Planner.)
Amaris, thank you so much for that kind
introduction. You are an inspiring young leader for your campus and for this
city.
And really, thanks to all the
students, faculty and staff here at the Community College of Allegheny County
who participated in today’s program. We are deeply grateful to CCAC President
Alex Johnson for hosting this celebration and for his commitment
to making sure that students with disabilities have the opportunities to learn
and grow in an environment that recognizes, nurtures and empowers their
talents.
I also want to thank all the other
speakers who have shared this stage today, including our friends from the EEOC,
the Office of Vocational Rehab and the Job Accommodation Network.
I am pleased to be joined here by
many of my colleagues from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.
They are led by our Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Regional Director Michele
Hodge and our Pittsburgh District Director Tracie
Brown.
Could all the OFCCP staff please
stand or be otherwise recognized?
These are just some of the nearly
800 men and women around the country who work for OFCCP and are on the front
lines every day when it comes to making sure that the promise of
equal opportunity is a reality for all workers.
I am here today at the start of a
ten-day, eight-city, five-state road trip through our Northeast and Mid-Atlantic
regions. I love road trips. They’re good for the soul. And I could think of no
better place to kick this one off than here in Pittsburgh, where there seems to
be something in the water (or is it the fries at Primanti Brothers?) that makes
this city a catalyst for great activism on disability rights.
In 1965, just a few weeks after
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, a group of civil rights
leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., went to the White House to
discuss next steps for the movement. Now that progress was being made toward
social justice, Dr. King turned his attention to the issue of
economic justice.
In spite of nearly 30 years of
massive federal projects – from the New Deal to the military build-up for World
War II and the construction of the federal highway system – black unemployment
was still much higher than the national average. The Civil Rights Act and the
creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would do much to combat
discrimination in American workplaces, but something was still missing:
real, economic opportunity.
That discussion in the Oval Office
– between a President and a King – led to the signing of Executive Order 11246,
which created a new requirement for all companies which do business with our
taxpayer dollars. It required that federal contractors and subcontractors do
more than just prohibit discrimination on the bases of race, color, national
origin, religion and sex. It said that if you are going to profit
from the taxpayers, your workforce ought to look like, sound like
and truly reflect the diversity of those taxpayers.
And so, affirmative action was
born.
Over the years, that authority was
expanded by Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and by the Vietnam Era
Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act, or VEVRAA. Together, these two laws –
signed by President Richard Nixon – added people with disabilities and protected
veterans to LBJ’s original vision.
What Dr. King understood then –
and what all of us can appreciate now – is the simple truth that social justice
without economic security is meaningless. Civil rights must come with real
economic opportunity. Otherwise, they’re just words on a piece of
paper.
For the past 47 years, OFCCP has
been ensuring that those economic opportunities are available to
all workers. Our mission is simple: to protect workers, promote
diversity and enforce the law.
Laws are an investment. They are a
statement of principle and expectations. The dividends come with implementation
and enforcement.
That’s why we are gathering here
today… to celebrate a law and the dividends it has paid for more than two
decades.
On this day in 1990, President
George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. It was a
major milestone for our country. It was a moment of incredible hope and optimism
for people with disabilities and their families. On that day, we could all feel
that the arc of the moral universe was bending a little closer to
justice.
At the time, I was a civil rights
attorney working in California. In law school I had clerked for the great
disability rights advocate Arlene Mayerson, and now, as a lawyer, I was ready to
represent clients in cases brought under the new ADA.
One of the cases that stands out
for me was a class action lawsuit I worked on against the San Francisco Unified
School District. For six years, we fought the district to meet its legal
responsibilities to make sure that every student with a disability
– and their parents – had physical and programmatic access to the 96 schools and
other educational facilities in our city. It took a while, but in 2005 we won.
And we won on behalf of every single child with a disability in San Francisco
who just wanted the chance to go to school and learn.
That’s what the ADA has meant for
our country.
It meant that the boy with Spina
Bifida in rural Texas didn’t have to watch from the window as the school bus
passed by his house.
It meant that the young woman in
the Bronx, who lives with a hearing disability, didn’t have to wonder if, in
addition to college tuition, her family would be able to afford the cost of
interpreters so she could attend one of the most prestigious universities in our
country.
And it meant that the girl with
cerebral palsy, living right here in Pittsburgh, didn’t have to be segregated in
classes where she would get an education that was both separate and
unequal.
Ladies and gentleman, it’s been 22
years. That’s a generation.
A whole generation of young people
have grown up in our country with the ability to access education, public
accommodations and services. They’ve never know anything different.
But then they decide to enter the
job market and, far too many of them find a door that is closing.
My job – and the job of my
colleagues at the Department of Labor – is to push that door back open – and to
keep it that way.
At OFCCP, we enforce Section 503
of the Rehab Act, which protects qualified workers with a disability from
discrimination in the work place. It also requires the nearly 200,000 business
establishments that provide supplies and services to our government – including
most Fortune 500 companies – take affirmative action to recruit, hire, train,
place, promote and fairly compensate qualified workers with disabilities in
every part of our country.
The ADA was about
access. Section 503 is about opportunity.
Here’s what I know:
I know that disabled doesn’t mean
unable.
I know that there are
qualified workers with disabilities all over this country who
simply want a fair shot to find, compete for, secure and succeed in good
jobs.
I know that too many of these
workers are unemployed, underemployed and discouraged from seeking meaningful
work. It’s an issue we confront at the Department of Labor every day.
I know that we’ve “admired” the
problem for too long. We’ve analyzed it and fretted over it enough.
I know that it is a persistent,
intractable and insidious problem. But it is also an eminently
solvable one.
In the three years since President
Obama appointed me to this job, I’ve come to know that Washington, DC can be –
let’s be honest – a little dysfunctional.
But I know that where there is
political will and civil discourse, we can close the disability employment
gap.
I know that we have a President
who gets it. He gets this.
As a candidate for office, then
Senator Obama pledged to put real teeth behind our enforcement of Section 503.
Today, President Obama is showing that leadership by giving OFCCP the tools and
the resources to truly enforce the law.
I know that I am the 99 percent.
And by that I mean that I’m part of the 99 percent of the people in this country
who get to live free and safe from harm because of the one percent of American
soldiers and military families who did most of the sacrificing, the fighting,
the waiting and the dying during the past decade of war.
And I know that those wounded
warriors, who are coming home with a service-related disability – deserve more
than just the “thanks of a grateful nation.” They deserve a job.
I know that progress doesn’t
happen in a moment. It happens in a movement. And
tackling the challenges of disability and veterans’ employment will require a
full-scale movement that marshals the resources of agencies like mine and
engages the participation of employers, advocates, experts and individual
workers like you.
We cannot do this
alone.
I know that corporations are not
the enemy any more than workers are all victims. Mike Kinger from Lowe’s is a
living, breathing testament to what happens when a father’s motivation meets
corporate innovation. He is an American hero and we honor him for the work he
and so many of his colleagues at Lowe’s are doing to not only recruit and hire
people with disabilities, but also to figure out how to retain them in the work
force.
The truth is that, as I look
around this room, it is clear we have incredible leaders from every sector of
our society who are committed to opening the doors of opportunity to qualified
workers with disabilities.
And we are grateful for your
leadership.
By way of example – and since I’m
in his hometown – I’d like to make a special note of Greg Babe, who recently
ended his tenure as President and CEO of Bayer Corporation. Back in February,
Greg sent me a letter in response to a regulation we are proposing which seeks
to improve employment opportunities for qualified workers with disabilities by
strengthening the affirmative action requirements in Section 503.
As you might imagine, there have
been some very vocal critics of this rule, particularly in the business
community. They’ve howled about over-regulation and a government that they
believe is placing too many burdens on free enterprise. They act as if enforcing
the law is going to bring down profits and destroy America as we know it –
incidentally, some of the same dire predictions that were made about the ADA
twenty-two years ago.
But Greg’s been around a while.
And he didn’t join that small, but powerful chorus. Instead, he wrote the
following:
“I can tell you from experience
that hiring, promoting, and retaining workers with disabilities is good for our
business, good for our shareholders, and good for the communities in which we do
business.”
And I know this sentiment is
shared by so many of our business leaders and by thousands of federal
contractors who want to comply with the laws we enforce at OFCCP.
We need more Greg Babes and Mike
Kingers who will not only show this sort of leadership in their own companies,
but who will also serve as role models to other employers.
Everyone has to do their part to
define success. Government, corporate America, academic
institutions, community advocates and workers – we all have a role to play. The
regulatory and enforcement work of OFCCP is only one piece of the puzzle.
If we’re going to close the
unemployment gap and bring more people with disabilities into the labor force,
it’s going to take a sustained and committed effort from every sector of our
society to define what success looks like and to come up with the innovative and
practical approaches that will get us there.
We did it before with the ADA.
Greg did it at Bayer. Mike is doing it at Lowe’s. And I see this sort of
thinking happening at places like Walgreen’s, Campbell Soup, Sodexo and right
here at CCAC.
As someone who has
hired many people in my career, I can tell you that when people with
disabilities apply for jobs, when they come in for that interview, they are not
there in spite of their challenges. They are there because they refuse to let
those challenges define them. In my experience they are exactly the kind of
motivated employees we should all want to have in our workplaces.
Thirty years after
the passage of the Rehab Act and VEVRAA… and two decades after the ADA… we have
made much progress, but we have more to do.
I know that both
Republicans and Democrats have taken leadership in this area. After all, the
Rehab Act and VEVRAA were passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a
Republican President.
I’m a parent. And
what I know is that Republican parents of children with disabilities share the
same hopes and aspirations as Democratic parents and, really, all parents: that
their children will grow up to be capable, self-reliant, working members of
society – and that they will be recognized for their inherent worth and
value.
That’s why the
regulatory and enforcement work of the OFCCP is so important.
I know that telling
federal contractors what they could do and should
do, without giving them a way to measure success, doesn't work.
I know that what
gets measured gets done. And this administration is in the business of getting
things done.
Good
faith is how we come to
the table, but accountability is going to be the way we define our
enforcement.
I know that the only
way to level the playing field for employers and for workers is to provide
clarity about what is required under the law. And that is our commitment at
OFCCP.
And I know that good
policy is the cornerstone of strong enforcement. As a worker protection agency,
we at OFCCP enforce the civil rights of nearly one-quarter of the American
workforce – the individuals who work for or seek jobs with government
contractors.
I know that in spite
of all the progress that has been made, we are still finding violations of equal
employment opportunity laws. Last year alone, 30% of our audits turned up
violations of affirmative action requirements for people with disabilities and
20% for protected veterans.
I know we can do
better and that we must do better.
Finally, I know that
reasonable people can see a problem and come up with different approaches to
solving it. We won’t always agree, but we must strive to be agreeable.
I know that civil
discourse is vital to our success and those who seek to inflame public opinion
through demeaning rhetoric only end up demeaning themselves.
Our economy is
recovering. But in order for it to be a truly "American" recovery, it must
benefit the many and not just the few.
That is what I know. Now, let
me tell you what I believe:
I believe the
efforts we are undertaking at the Department of Labor – to strengthen the
affirmative action for people with disabilities and for veterans – those efforts
are not just going to make history…
I believe we are
going to make possibility for 33 million working-age Americans
with disabilities who want nothing more complicated than the chance to find good
jobs, meaningful jobs, jobs that help them – to borrow a phrase – be all that
they can be and all that we as a nation need them to be.
I believe that
commitment is what transforms a promise into a
reality.
I believe it. I know
it.
And you know it.
So, let’s get this
done.
Thank you so much
for joining us today.
