A Matter of Good Business

HIRING THE HANDICAPPED

To keep pace with the expanding demands of consumers, U.S. industry needs a steadily increasing stream of skilled and productive workers. One great manpower pool that many businessmen have neglected is handicapped workers. In 1954, according to the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped, there were 7,000,000 Americans of working age who were severely handicapped--by blindness, the loss of a limb, by tuberculosis, epilepsy, or some other crippling disease. Of the total, only a relative few were permanently employed. But the estimates are that some 4,000,000 can eventually be rehabilitated and gainfully employed. Not only would rehabilitation lead them into happier lives, but with the increasing complexity of such U.S. industries as electronics and aviation, handicapped people can actually perform many skilled and delicate jobs better than able-bodied workers.

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Dozens of public and private groups are already hard at work on the problem. President Eisenhower has set up a top-level committee to promote the hiring of physically or mentally handicapped. The Office of Vocational Rehabilitation is doling out $30 million in Government aid to state agencies to help put the handicapped in jobs. Overall, some 60,000 disabled workers found jobs in industry in 1954, and the U.S. Government estimates that the number will jump 200% by 1959. But this will tap only a fraction of the potential manpower. Many businessmen are frankly reluctant to hire the handicapped because they fear that such workers are prone to injury, will hurt themselves on the job and thus boost insurance compensation rates. The fears are largely groundless. Some state compensation laws make a company responsible for a worker's total disability, regardless of his previous injury. However, 42 states now have "second injury" funds which protect employers against paying total disability compensation for injuries to an already handicapped worker. But the biggest reason for the lag is that businessmen simply do not think that the handicapped are good workers. Actually, a handicapped worker in the right job does just as well as his able-bodied neighbor. Says the National Association of Manufacturers, in its Guide in Hiring the Physically Handicapped: "In the past decade, production records of thousands of physically handicapped persons in industry indicate beyond any question that socalled 'handicapped' workers are equal to--and in some instances better than --their able-bodied associates in such important factors as attendance, turnover, safety and productivity." The records of individual companies bear out the N.A.M. In Dallas, Chance Vought Aircraft employs 297 disabled among its 12,500 workers. Heart cases work at tool design, polio victims as technical writers, amputees operate automatic machines and lathes. The company found that there is not only less malingering and absenteeism, but better production and greater safety consciousness among this group than in any other. Ford Motor Co.'s assembly plant in the same city has 600 handicapped workers in its 2,700-man work force. Says Personnel Manager John McKee: "After all, if a job can be done with one arm, why shouldn't an employer hire a man with one arm to do it?" Few U.S. companies, big or small, create special jobs for the handicapped. Few have to. In Detroit, Chrysler has placed thousands of physically handicapped workers in good jobs since 1943, thoroughly tests each applicant for what he can do, then finds a job to fit. General Motors has the same type of system at its Dayton, Ohio Frigidaire plant. For example, an ex-punch-press operator who got tuberculosis of the spine checks for leaks in refrigerator units passing through a tank of water, a job that does not require him to stoop or twist.

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With the increasing specialization of U.S. industry, more and more jobs are opening up for handicapped workers. What the handicapped lose in flexibility because of their disability, they make up by concentrating on a single job, or a few jobs, learning to do them better. Firestone has 150 deaf employees alone. Allis-Chalmers, IBM, Hughes Tool, Procter & Gamble, Bui-ova Watch Co., Eli Lilly (drugs) have all found use for handicapped workers; electronic firms such as RCA, Western Electric, General Electric are using them to assemble delicate TV and radar circuits. At Lockheed's big plant at Marietta, Ga., the company last year saved $65,000 by employing a Griffin, Ga. workshop for the blind to pick over the factory sweepings, salvage thousands of tiny nuts, washers and screws that fell to the floor below its B-47 production line. On the record, handicapped workers are pulling their own weight in U.S. industry, and there are millions more who are willing and able to hold down good jobs.

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