Kessler Foundation is one of the biggest public charities when it comes to helping people with disabilities. The organization works to improve the quality of life of disabled people.

Recently, the said charity foundation granted the University of Hawaii a Signature Employment Grant with an amount of $425,000 as a part of more than $2.7 million in 2011 to its Office of Research Services. Since 2005, Kessler has awarded more than $20 million to the innovative employment initiatives.

The grant will support the development of a virtual reality (VR) software application which will be called EmployAble. It aims to help jobseekers to journey across the world of job hunting and adapt to the workplace.  The Virtual Employment Orientation and Support Center will benefit people with disabilities, including veterans and victims of traumatic brain injury. EmployAble will be created by the University’s team of researchers which mostly comprises of disabled persons. The University of Hawaii Center on Disability Studies, Abilicorp and Virtual Ability will collaborate on this project.

Meanwhile, Kessler foundation is also doing its own study about clinical virtual reality for rehabilitation applications.

EmployAble is expected to draw on new components of commercial VR software programs from Multiple User Virtual Environments (MUVE) to Second Life (SL) and Virtual World Simulation (SIM). Employable will simulate workplace social interactions and present generally used assistive technology such as screen readers, captioning video programs, creation of accessible document, presentation programs and use of accessible features like VoiceThread and Adobe Flash and Text-to-speech software

Many disabled persons are suffering from employment disabilities. Through this two year grant provided by Kessler, problem regarding high rate of unemployment and underemployment of disabled people is expected to be resolved.

This project will make an improvement to the quality of life of the people with spinal cord and head injury, multiple sclerosis, stroke and other neurological problems.

It is indeed illegal for a company to reject a job applicant due to a person’s disabilities, but still a lot of employers do and for that, employment disability is becoming a huge problem in the society. Employment discrimination due to an individual’s physical or mental disability is illegal. Under the Americans with Disability Act and Fair Employment and Housing Act, such sort of discrimination is precluded.

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Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions’ press release, the agency is urging employers to eliminate unnecessary broad background checks after discovering hundreds of applicants filing for racial discrimination charges. All of these resulted from the criminal background checks done by a beverage company in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The EEOC recently found out that over 300 Africans-Americans are harshly affected by the Pepsi Beverages, formerly known as Pepsi Bottling Group. It occurred when the company conducted a criminal background policy check that disproportionately rejected black applicants for employment.

Under Pepsi’s former policy, applicants who have been arrested or convicted of certain minor offenses shall be denied employment. However, this contradicts the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, where the use of arrest and conviction records to deny employment can be unlawful when it is not relevant for the job since it can limit the opportunities of the applicants or workers based on their race.

In the course of events, the said Beverage Company has agreed with the EEOC in modifying their policies thus adopting the new one. However, the aforementioned company is still required to pay all the monetary fines and other penalty charges set against them.

The EEOC Minneapolis Acting Director, Julie Schmid reminds employers that when conducting a background check, the nature and gravity of the offense of the applicant must be taken into consideration. More over the time that has passed since the conviction or completion of the sentence and the nature of the job in search must also be dealt with proper jurisdiction to make sure that job rejection is important for the particular position. She also added that such rejection can be considered as racial discrimination, a violation of the Title VII. In behalf of the EEOC, Acting Director Schmid hopes that employers with unnecessarily broad criminal background check policies would reassess their policies in order to comply with the provisions stated under Title VII.

The EEOC is expecting that employers would take note of their settlement agreement with Pepsi regarding on its strict qualifications in order to eliminate employment discrimination and establish equal employment opportunities for everyone.

In Pepsi’s case, the EEOC is grateful that Pepsi chooses to make an agreement in setting some real great changes without the need of further litigation. In some cases, employers usually oppose employment discrimination claims by trying to fabricate reasons for the employment action. Therefore, an employee filing for complaints must be sure that his or her lawyer is familiar with the tricks that employers do.  Los Angeles Employment lawyers know very well on how to utilize their knowledge regarding laws when employment discrimination cases arises such as these.

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When an employer or a supervisor wants to retaliate, there’s nothing that’s going to hold them back and keep them from making trumped up charges or irrational warnings, like in the case filed against Fisher Nut Company for retaliation where one employee was even reprimanded for “laughing during the course of the work day”.

A retaliation lawsuit was against the California-based almond-processing company by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after it discovered that a group of Latina employees were subjected to unfavorable actions and retaliation because they participated in an informal meeting.

continue reading…

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Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F), a leading American clothing retailer with over 300 stores in the US is in the hot seat as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has launched employment discrimination lawsuits against it.

Earlier this September, a store of A&F in Milpitas was sued by the EEOC when they refused to hire a female applicant because she was wearing a hijab or a muslim head scarf.

Barely a month after, A&F is once again facing legal action, this time, in San Diego. Allegedly, a former employee Abdul Jabbar Gbajiamilla, was fired for his “cornrows”. Cornrows refer to a traditional West African style of hair grooming where the hair is braided close to the scalp.

In his suit, Gbajiamilla claimed that he was told that his hair style did not fit the company criteria’s for a “clean, natural, and classic” hair style.

Further, a testimony from an Abercrombie’s human resources director in a related proceeding proved Gbajiamilla’s allegation as the director admitted that the hair style doesn’t meet the clean, natural and classic threshold and that the corn rows were “extreme” and “uncommon”.

According to Gbajiamilla, he filed the discrimination lawsuit because he believed that he shouldn’t conceal or tone down his identity as a black person. Gbajiamilla was quoted to have said, “I brought this lawsuit because I believe the United States has come too far in regards to racial tolerance to now retreat.”

The Ohio clothing company is certainly no stranger to discrimination lawsuits filed by employees. In fact, in 2005, the company entered into a racial discrimination settlement — Abercrombie & Fitch’s has an existing employee dress code that bans head coverings. Previously, the company has denied discrimination charges and said that their policies were only to avoid undue hardship for the company’s business.

While it is true that an employer may forego or not grant reasonable accommodation if it is proven that it would cause undue hardship to business, how an employee wears his hair or even a hijab has no direct relation to how he performs his work and why it would even affect the business.

Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other federal laws, it is unlawful for employers to discriminate against employees or applicants on the basis of their race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.

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Though many people are aware that they have the right to recovery for discrimination and harassment by an employer, most people are not that familiar with the nuts and bolts of such claims.  As a result, there are a number of misconceptions regarding to the way an employment claim works.   continue reading…

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