Navigating Policy on the Job: Disabled Workers Negotiating Workplace Accommodations

• In Event: The Disability Employment Gap: New Evidence from Investigations of Barriers and Interventions

Abstract

Nearly 35 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law, disabled workers in the US still face multiple barriers to finding and maintaining employment.  While the ADA formally prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability and requires reasonable accommodations, the process of seeking and securing accommodations can unfold along a myriad of routes, as policy is interpreted and implemented within specific workplaces.  This paper explores those processes, focusing on the quandaries facing disabled workers and the additional labor they do to navigate accommodations processes.

The paper draws on 40 in-depth semi-structured interviews I conducted with disabled people in the Chicago area during 2022 and 2023.  All had some experience in the labor force, ranging from highly precarious short-term work to long-term careers in a variety of fields.  At the time of our interviews, the group was relatively evenly split into three groups: those with stable jobs, those who were precariously employed or seeking work, and those who were no longer in the labor force.  Using the ADA’s broad definition of disability as a starting point, I recruited informants with a wide range of physical, psychological, sensory, and developmental disabilities. Ages ranged from 18 to 70, and informants identified variously as white, Black, Latinx, and Asian or Asian-American.  They included men, women, and nonbinary people. Interview prompts covered a wide range of topics including informants’ work histories, their experiences (if any) seeking disability accommodations, and how they thought of their place in the world of work.  Some informants also shared accommodation paperwork and similar bureaucratic documents.  I approached each interview as a separate case, drawing on Mario Small’s concept of sequential interviewing (2009), and I iteratively and thematically coded the data I gathered.

 

I find that if disabled workers are hired in the first place, they must perform significant additional labor to secure accommodations.  This process includes learning that such arrangements are even possible, which was not obvious to many informants, particularly those who developed disabilities as adults, and had not had accommodations in school as children.  Some sought out other legal frameworks through which to advocate for themselves, such as by seeking temporary reprieve through the Family and Medical Leave Act.  Formally requesting accommodations brought new difficulties, as workers balanced demands to disclose details of their disabilities while also managing relationships with bosses and supervisors.  Several informants described putting in extra hours or holding themselves to higher standards to convince managers that they were “worth it” to keep employed, despite their accommodations.  Many expressed gratitude for managers who supported their accommodations, but this also reflected a vulnerability; new supervisors, or a change in relationships, could throw arrangements into question.  These findings point both to the uncertainty facing disabled workers, and to the importance of qualitative research that explores policy implementation at granular levels.

Author

• Matthew Borus, Binghamton University (SUNY-Binghamton)
  Presenting Author