US Senator Tom Harkin (right) compares sign language with Mr Willie White, a sign-language interpreter at a SIPTU workshop in Dublin yesterday. Photograph: Peter Thursfield. A Supreme Court ruling that it is unconstitutional to make employers bear the cost of accommodating people with disabilities has been strongly criticised by US Senator Tom Harkin. He sponsored the 1990 Americans with Disability Act, which outlawed discrimination against this group in the US. Senator Harkin, a recognised international authority on civil rights for those with disabilities, was speaking at a SIPTU conference on disability equality in Dublin yesterday.
He said he was struck by the similarities between the position of people with disabilities in Ireland today and their situation in the US until recently.
He said he had been disappointed and surprised at the Supreme Court decision to rule the outgoing government's Employment Equality Bill unconstitutional. The court decided employers should not be made liable for the cost of what was primarily a social issue. "I read the Supreme Court decision, and they couldn't be more wrong," he said.
He told an audience of trade unionists, activists in groups representing people with disabilities, service providers and academics: "Don't let the Supreme Court decision dissuade you from working for your programme to end discrimination. We will do whatever we can to work with you."
The US experience had shown that the cost to society and to employers of accommodating people with disabilities was more than offset by the gains, he said. Since the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) was passed, 800,000 extra people with severe disabilities had entered the workforce, an increase of 27 per cent.
Turning to the business sector, Senator Harkin said a job accommodation survey carried out in 1996, two years after the ADA came into full force, showed that 50 per cent of people with disabilities could be accommodated at no extra cost to the employer. Costs for the remainder ranged from very little to $500. The median cost was $200 per employee.
The Federal Government Accounting Office found that 87 per cent of small companies, a sector where there had been widespread concern about the impact of the new legislation, said the removal of barriers to employing people with disabilities had been beneficial to their business. Only 27 per cent had experienced problems.
The senator said the 1990 Act was equivalent to a second American declaration of emancipation. A person with disabilities who was the best candidate for the job should not be discriminated against. The Supreme Court, in its anxiety to protect employers, "missed the point that business can make money doing this. "I know so many restaurateurs, because they testified at hearings, who said their business was up because they had widened a door way or made the bathroom more accessible. They had grossly overestimated the costs and didn't take account of the benefits that would accrue to them." Senator Harkin expressed the hope that his data would be of help in overcoming the Supreme Court decision.