Federal employees with disabilities with regards to occupation, race, and gender.

Introduction

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 was designed to protect disabled persons from discrimination on the basis of disabilities, including hearing, seeing, speaking, breathing, learning, walking, mental or emotional impairments, by private or public employers. In other words, the ADA sought to prevent persons with disabilities from discrimination in employment practices and improve their employment conditions and opportunities. One of the key issues in Title I of the ADA is that public or private employers should provide "reasonable accommodations" in employment practices for employees and applicants with disabilities. That is, public accommodations and services should be accessible to persons with disabilities. To carry out the essential function of the job, disabled individuals should be provided reasonable accommodations, including a work schedule change, a job restructuring, the provision of an auxiliary aid, or physical modification to the workforce. (1) Accommodating workers, applicants, or citizens with disabilities by modifying public facilities and restructuring jobs can cause a financial burden for public or private employers, even though a severe financial burden can exempt an employer from the requirement to offer a reasonable accommodation. (2)

The literature on the employment of persons with disabilities in the federal, state and local governments focuses on the preparation of the ADA, the implementation of the ADA, or the impacts of the ADA on public personnel management practices. This study instead investigates persons with disabilities in the federal service with regard to occupational structure, race and gender. More specifically, this study examines the distribution of federal employees with disabilities with regard to occupation, race, gender and department through an analysis of the recent demographic data on fulltime disabled employees in the federal civil service. Theoretically, this study is important in terms of providing possible explanations for the relationship between occupation, race, ethnicity, or gender and the employment of disabled individuals in the public sector.

Theory and Hypothesis on the Employment of Persons with Disabilities

Studies on the employment of disabled individuals in the public sector indicate that the impacts of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 are not significant enough to affect public personnel management practices due to vague regulations, insufficient budget allocations or poor preparedness. In the national survey of municipal government chief administrative officers regarding reasonable accommodations for employees or job applicants with HIV/AIDS, Slack revealed that municipal governments were poorly prepared to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the public workplace provided little protection for people with HIV/AIDS. (3) In the national survey of state government personnel managers concerning the effect of the ADA on public personnel management practices, Kellough found that a majority of respondents perceived that the ADA had no significant impacts on their organizations, while substantial proportions of respondents perceived that the ADA did have certain more narrowly defined impacts on public personnel practices. (4)

Bishop and Jones indicated that the overall assessment of the prospects for successful implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was positive. (5) However, they pointed out that administrative agencies would move slowly to issue regulations if groups representing persons with disabilities did not apply continual pressure on the agencies to fashion timely and effective regulations. (6) In the survey of municipal governments encompassing all cities in the United States with a population of 50,000 or more, Condrey and Brudney found that 49 percent of the responding municipal personnel directors considered lack of budgetary support to make necessary modifications a major obstacle to implementation of the ADA; 39 percent of the respondents reported that vague regulations made ADA implementation difficult. (7)

Condrey and Brudney also noted that "the respondents reported that making a reasonable accommodation was significantly more difficult for public safety positions such as police officers and firefighters and public works positions such as laborer and equipment operator," whereas "they reported less difficult in making job accommodations for technical positions such as computer programmer and drafter, professional occupations such as personnel analyst and accountant, and clerical occupations such as secretary and clerk." (8) These findings suggested that "the reach of the ADA's reasonable accommodation provisions may not extend equally to all occupational groups" and, thus, applicants seeking office positions or white-collar occupations, such as professional, administrative, technical, or clerical occupations may have a distinct advantage compared to applicants seeking blue-collar occupations. (9) Consequently, disabled white-collar workers could be more fairly represented than disabled blue-collar workers in public or private organizations.

Race or gender might make a difference in the employment of persons with disabilities, while occupation is linked to the degree of difficulties in making job accommodations. Racial or gender minorities who are not disabled tend to be highly concentrated in clerical or blue-collar jobs as opposed to professional and administrative jobs in the federal service. For instance, African American or Hispanic women are heavily concentrated in clerical occupations and lower-level grades, while Caucasian men are highly overrepresented in professional and administrative occupations and higher-level grades. (10) Asian federal employees, especially men, are most likely to be overrepresented in professional occupations, particularly engineering and computer science majors, while they are severely underrepresented in administrative occupations in the federal service.

Like racial or gender minorities without disabilities, the employment of disabled racial or gender minorities could be linked to racial or gender stereotypical occupations, roles or positions. For example, Caucasian men with disabilities in professional and administrative occupations may be better represented than other racial or female groups with disabilities in those jobs. African American women with disabilities in clerical occupations may be better represented than other racial or gender groups with disabilities in those jobs.

In addition to the occupational structure of persons with disabilities, the distribution of disabled veterans could be linked to the employment of the disabled in the federal service. In fact, veterans have an advantage over civilians in the hiring process. Furthermore, veterans might populate the departments whose missions or interests are related to those of veterans. Cornwell and Kellough noted that "interagency differences in the employment of women and minorities are systematically related to the distribution of occupations within an agency and an agency's demographic and organizational characteristics." (11)

Hypothesis: In the federal service, racial or gender minorities with disabilities have comparable occupational distributions as racial or gender minorities without disabilities. The distribution of veterans with disabilities is also the significant indicator of the employment of persons with disabilities.

Methodology

Aggregate demographic data on federal employees with disabilities by occupation, department, race, ethnicity, gender, or department are available from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The employment distribution of persons with disabilities in all full-time career civil positions--except elected and appointed positions--in the federal service in the year 2002 is examined with regard to race, ethnicity, gender, occupation and executive branch department. Grade and pay levels of federal employees with disabilities, however, are not analyzed because of insufficient data.

Findings and Discussion

Occupation and Gender

Table 1 displays the distribution of federal employees with disabilities with regard to occupational classification (PATCO) and gender in the year 2002. Table 1 indicates that the distribution of disabled federal employees in white-collar occupations was not significantly different from the distribution of disabled federal employees in blue-collar occupations (e.g., white-collar occupations 7.1% and blue-collar occupations 7.4%), but disabled men were better represented than disabled women across occupations (e.g., women 6.2% and men 7.9% in white-collar occupations; women 6.4% and men 7.5% in blue-collar occupations). (12) Table 1 also suggests that among white-collar occupations, disabled employees, especially men, were well represented in clerical and technical occupations, whereas disabled employees--especially women--were poorly represented in professional and administrative occupations in the federal service.

Professional and administrative positions generally require more education and more years of experience than do clerical and technical positions. (13) Most decision-making positions are filled by professional and administrative occupations. Almost 43 percent of the federal senior executives in 1999 were occupied by professional occupations and approximately 40 percent administrative occupations. (14) Additionally, almost 44 percent of the federal senior executives in 1999 had bachelor's degrees, 35 percent master's degrees, and 16 percent had doctoral degrees. (15)