The EEOC amended the federal disability employment regulation on January 3, 2017 (Affirmative Action, 2017). Even after delivering the amended publication by the EEOC to FEDs, Senator Tammy Duckworth and other Congressional leaders, including former congressman Elijah Cummings, complained to the former Office of Personnel Management Acting Director Margaret Weichert on June 8, 2019 (Katz, 2019). Congressional lawmakers expressed concerns that qualified federal workers with disabilities were terminated at twice the rate of workers without disabilities. They questioned the federal agencies’ commitment to being model employers to qualified federal workers with disabilities (Katz, 2019).
Section 501, The Rehabilitation Act
The Rehab Act emphasizes that federal employers are accountable for promoting disabled workers, especially when supporting RA requests or requirements for such help (Rehab Act, 1992; U.S. EEOC, 2017b). Further expansion of Section 501 gave federal executive agencies the foundational ground rules to provide reasonable accommodations and protection against discrimination in employment (Rehab Act, 1992). President Clinton signed Executive Order (EO) 13163 (2000a), which reinforced fundamental ground rules and directed federal employers to strengthen the determinations to offer accommodations to QFWD, and EO 13164 instructs agencies to create written procedures for administering reasonable accommodations (2000b).
Reasonable accommodation under Section 501 is a federal mandate that supports qualified federal workers with disabilities. Several factors have been identified with reasonable accommodation requests, such as: (a) employers are mandated to assess written and verbal requests submissions irrespective of how the request is submitted (Dong et al., 2020); (b) evidence indicates that qualified federal workers with disabilities are capable of and desire to work (U.S. GAO, 2012); (c) the RAR is a multi-layered ongoing process and is not a one-time occurrence; (d) are interrelated with more profitable work results for workers with disabilities (MacDonald-Wilson et al., 2008); (e) agencies are not required to report reasonable accommodation requests for the disabled workforce (Balser, 2007); (f) QFWD view accommodations as an essential part of employment and retention (Dong et al., 2012), (g) the employer's role in job accommodation and disability employment barriers is significant (Lyubykh et al., 2020); (h) management commitment and reasonable accommodation accessibility (U.S. EEOC, 2016a); (i) the acknowledgement that “accommodation comes in units of one” (Balser, 2007, pg. 657); and (j) that telework as a reasonable accommodation requests in the federal government are analyzed and evaluated under civil right statutory policies and not the department’s regular telework policies (OPM, n.d.-a; U.S. EEOC, 2003b).
Reasonable accommodations can differ between a QFWD potentially staying employed or being forced to leave employment. Weinberg et al. (2019) found that reasonable accommodation requires employers to make minor workplace adjustments so qualified disabled workers can enjoy equality in the workplace. Likewise, Frías-López and Queipo-de-Llano (2020) found that the “reasonableness” of accommodations should not be based mainly on the accommodation cost relative to the agencies' resources. Prior research on employers’ attitudes toward qualified workers with disabilities shows successful accommodating in a welcoming environment (Kaye et al., 2011). Dwoskin and Squire (2013) found employers have struggled with the reasonable accommodation mandate under the Rehab Act and ADA more than other federal workplace laws. Federal employers have received increasing requests that have varied over time.
Washington's (2018) study argues that organizational culture often promotes unfavorable attitudes toward QFWDs. The researcher found that the employers fail to document their roles and responsibilities for the process, consequently promoting psychological distress and other emotional tension influencing employment barriers. According to Kraus et al. (2018), the employment gap continues to be above 40 percentage points between workers without and with disabilities, as illustrated in Figure 1 from the Current Population Survey, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] (2020). The chart displays a sharp variation in the employment participation rate among workers without and with disabilities. According to the Current Population Survey, the working-age population ranges from 16 to 64.
Figure 1. U.S. Disability Labor Force Statistics 2019 – 2020