Disability Champions hit the USA

The conference, entitled “Exploring Employment and Retention Strategies for People with Disabilities” brought together business people and people from disability organisations on both sides of the Atlantic to share ideas and best practice. As the only trade union person there it was a little daunting but knowing what a wonderful initiative I was to share with them took away the nerves and apprehension.

The event took place in the US Department of Labour building as the flags flew at half mast over DC in memory of Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, whose funeral took place whilst I was there.

Session 1 looked at the business case for recruiting and retaining disabled people. The EU presentations were from Pepe Abergues from Ford Spain and Victor Pisani, Playmobil Malta. Pepe used an ingenious multimedia presentation made up from short clips from Beatles songs. He used this to describe the way Ford Spain use a skills database to fit people into suitable jobs based upon their abilities. He described the trials and tribulations he had encountered along the way and portrayed himself as everything from a 'nowhere man' to a 'fool on the hill'. It was nice to hear that the trade unions where the friends that he got by with a little help from!

The US presenters where Debra J Cohen of the Society for HRM and Steven Korte, CEO of A&F Wood Products. Steven shared his experiences of employing, training and developing a number of disabled workers who had come to his company via an agency. He said that not everyone had worked out but those who had were loyal, hard working exceptional employees.

After lunch the subject was applied retention techniques. This was great session about real people's stories of what we call 'reasonable adjustments'. Knut Weltlich of Bertalsmann, Germany showed a number of things including a system that used a vibrating pager to tell a deaf worker in an archive that an email request had arrived and a very sophisticated wheelchair that allowed the occupant to raise to a full height standing position. This has been a great success for one of their staff who could use all of the office facilities without height being a barrier. I was so impressed I took it for a test drive in the conference hall.

Erin Reihle shared some amazing examples of simple accommodations that had enabled many disabled workers to perform complex and vital jobs within Cincinnati Children's hospital. She described many advantages that this had brought, not least of which were financial benefits, but she also said how having disabled workers helped parents of disabled children by demonstrating that there is a future, and that that future is meaningful employment. Forgive me if anyone finds that a patronising thing to say but I thought that was really important. I picked up lots of information from both of these speakers and will be looking to develop some resources around them.

I was joined on the platform by William E Field and Hubert Von Holten from the Breaking New Ground resource centre in Indiana. If anyone ever says to you "you couldn't get in our workplace in a wheelchair" get them to call these guys up. They showed video footage of some of their equipment. They have a range of access scooters that can cross a field of standing corn, a wide range of custom built access hoists to get people to transfer from a chair to a tractor cab etc.

As our US host Susan B Parker began the formailities and then we had two very thought provoking and inspiring speeches from Lydia La Riviere Zijdel, EU delegate from the Netherlands and John D Kemp from the US. Lydia used the analogy of the grass being greener on the other side to describe both the EU and US perception of each other with respect to disability rights. She saw this conference as a way to explore this and concluded that both sides are very similar and can be green so long as we keep on watering but will soon wither if we stop.

He told us about talking to a young man about playing tennis in a wheelchair.

"you can play from a chair", he said no, "you can" I told him, no no no he said. "Come with me, I'll get you a chair and we'll play". Now 6 years later he is the Olympic gold medalist - the best player in the world.

Talk about a 'can do' attitude.

The US speaker was Joyce Bender, stood with me here. She collared me before the start of play having heard about the project from another delegate and was very interested in knowing more. She talked about her company, Bender Consulting and her struggle to have her epilepsy correctly diagnosed. Her fits had been put down to everything from 'women’s problems' to the flu. "This is a civil rights issue; we need Champions and we need them right now" she said.

Following another emotive speech from Dr Grizzard the conference came to a close. Before heading back to Dulles airport I met with Andy Imparato of the American Association of People with Disabilities and Cathie Sullivan of the American service workers union SEIU. Both were keen to develop the role of the TU Disability Champion in the States. Watch this space.

Meeting with such incredible people was a great honour and a very humbling experience. To think that politicians, company CEOs, Olympians, professors and senior representatives of disability organisations would fly me to the USA to tell them about a bright idea we had one sunny afternoon in Bishops Stortford. Its the American Dream.

Dave Parr

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