Sometimes you do all the right things and still end up with the short end of the stick. Glen Janisch, the human resource manager for Battle Creek’s RockTenn paper and packaging manufacturer stepped away from his desk to have open heart coronary...
An employer has the right to change work methods, production targets, and qualification standards as business necessity dictates. As the number of qualified individuals who have an in-place reasonable accommodation grows, those of us who manage these...
Nobody In My Department Works With Limitations... Albert E. Gucker was a 30-year veteran at U.S. Steel’s Irvin Works Tractor Shop. During 8 of those years he had a 30-pound lifting restriction imposed by company physicians. The presence of the restriction meant one of...
A consent decree signed in Minneapolis this month seems to be the final chapter in the story of Human Resources Manager Patricia Lebens and her former employer. It’s a story of post-discharge reporting of possible employment discrimination, potential...
Part of the magic of the reasonable accommodation interactive process is the two-party conversation that takes place. The success of the conversation predicts the success of a mutually agreed upon solution. A difficult conversation points to a less...
The temperature at dawn today was minus 18 degrees. My day today is about bringing in more firewood, working on an online curriculum for a new course, and writing a blog or two. The pleasant thing about splitting or moving firewood is that I get into...
Last month’s Cessna Aircraft settlement with the EEOC brings into focus many of the reasons I redirected my life’s work in rehabilitation and employment testing to focus on the challenges and benefits presented by Title I of the ADA. As I have said...
A friend and former colleague of mine who loved numbers was a keen observer of human behavior. He “came up” in the days of putting pencil to paper. I first met him in the year just after the Apple II was conceived. Visicalc may have resided in a future...
Over the decades, and as recently as the May 16, 2007 hearing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission , the issue of employment testing under the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP) has focused on psychometric forms of...
I have written many times that, of the groups strongly affected by the 2008 revision to the Americans with Disabilities Act, physicians are the most overlooked. When I mix together my lay knowledge of the law, the outcome of recent federal court...
