Disibility Discrimination: Postal Service settles bias suit

[Guest guest]

The agency agrees to pay $61 million in a disability discrimination

case filed by workers.

By Molly Selvin, Times Staff Writer

June 12, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-postal12jun12,1,3592971.story

More than 7,000 postal workers will be notified within the next two

weeks that the U.S. Postal Service has agreed to pay $61 million in

what lawyers say is the country's largest disability discrimination

class-action settlement.

The settlement reached late last month, if approved by a judge,

could break new ground under the Americans With Disabilities Act and

the Rehabilitation Act, which require employers to make " reasonable

accommodations " for disabled employees.

" It is now clear that just as in race discrimination cases,

disability discrimination can be extremely expensive for employers, "

said Brad Seligman, the Berkeley lawyer who negotiated the

settlement.

The plaintiffs claim that the postal service — the second-largest

employer in the U.S. after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. — routinely moved

workers injured on the job to menial positions that gave them no

chance of advancement.

The case started when postal employee Chandler Glover, who said the

high-pitched noise of the mail sorting machinery he operated in

Denver caused him pain and hearing loss, filed an Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission complaint.

When he returned to work in 1992 after a leave for medical

treatment, he applied for a promotion in the same unit, saying the

machine noise wasn't a problem when he wore earplugs, according to

the complaint. But the agency reclassified him as a janitor, a

position he held until his retirement in 2001.

" It was the closest thing you had to a dead-end job, " said

Mosby, Glover's lawyer.

More than 25,000 postal service employees were similarly warehoused

in " rehab positions, " Seligman said, though most didn't choose to

participate in the class action.

Some of these employees suffered permanent and severe back pain or

the loss of a limb, injuries that qualify as disabilities under

federal law. Glover's complaint claimed the agency repositioned

workers with less-severe injuries as well.

As part of an earlier agreement reached in the Glover case, this one

in 2004, the postal service changed its policies to make clear that

all employees were eligible for promotion, and it began tracking

bias complaints and monitoring compliance.

In the financial settlement agreement, the postal service said it

would make payments to the 7,500 class members mostly in the range

of $5,000 to $10,000 each, Seligman said, with some settlements of

$30,000 and up.

Final approval could come by the fall.

Anne Gibbons, general counsel for the postal service, issued a

statement calling the agreement " a fair settlement for all

concerned. "

Cameron, who teaches employment law at Southwestern Law

School in Los Angeles, said the agency was " a victim of it's own

goodwill: They rehired the folks but they didn't properly

accommodate them. "

If there's a message in the settlement, Cameron said, " for most

employers in the long run it will be cheaper to provide reasonable

accommodation than to defend this type of litigation. "

Still, the law isn't clear on just what constitutes accommodation,

said Deborah Saxe, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents employers. An

employee might say, " I want the $500 speaker phone because I can't

hear well, " she said, " but maybe the $100 speaker phone works fine

to accommodate the problem. "

The postal service currently employs 796,200 workers.