Wall Street Journal ^ | April 10, 2012 | JAMES BOVARD
The Obama administration is on the verge of compelling most of the largest corporations and universities, as well as many smaller businesses, to adopt a 7% hiring quota for disabled job applicants—lest they be debarred from doing business with the federal government. This radical personnel policy could raise costs and slash the productivity of almost 200,000 companies with U.S. government contracts.
The Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), declared: "For nearly 40 years, the rules have said that contractors simply need to make a 'good faith' effort to recruit and hire people with disabilities. Clearly, that's not working."
The federal government itself has only 5% disabled on its payrolls—and the Labor Department's percentage of disabled employees has decreased every year since President Obama took office, despite a sharp increase in the number of department employees.
The notice in the Federal Register about the hiring quota was more than 53,000 convoluted words, and many businesses and trade associations are vehement that the Labor Department's $81 million estimate of the costs of compliance is greatly underestimated. HR Policy estimates the total cost would be at least $1.8 billion, not counting the losses resulting from companies hiring less-productive employees.
The agency proposes requiring companies to invite all job applicants to label themselves as "disabled" prior to being hired. The International Food Service Distributors Association scoffed at this mandate: "The only thing that information is going to do is give OFCCP ammunition to challenge the non-hiring of individuals with disabilities who were not qualified to perform the jobs."
The regulations would also require companies to invite employees to label themselves disabled after being hired, and once a year thereafter.
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