Summary of Both Articles
Human society is a phenomenon that has always presupposed the struggle between those who consider their rights to be violated and those who violate those rights. It is no surprise, thus, that various conflicts were the results of such struggle in the past, while in the modern world they result in numerous legislative acts, laws, etc. One of the aspects of the inequality of rights in human society is the issue of equal rights for employment, especially for those people who due to a certain disability or impairment should be given special accommodations by the employers to fulfill the working functions properly (Noe, 2007). In the USA, this issue was attempted to be solved by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, and by the Amendments Act to the ADA of 2008. The articles under consideration are concerned with the essence of the amendments mentioned and try to see their positive and negative sides.
The first article is titled The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 Expands the Protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Its author is not specified but its relevance for the topic of equality of rights for people with disabilities is not lessened because of this fact. The article under consideration reports about the signing of the ADAAA (The ADA Amendments Act of 2008) that took place in the USA on September 25. Moreover, the essence of the major amendments to the ADA is disclosed in the article using comparison and implications of those changes for the public use in the spheres of employment and human resources management in various organizations and the society on the whole (Mondaq Business Briefing, 2008).
For example, the article considers several US Supreme Court cases that were solved differently the Congress after the adoption of the ADAAA and states that the category of people who will now be protected by the ADA and amendments to it. Thus, a person who managed to cope with his or her disabilities or impairments temporarily using some measures or devices is to be considered a disabled person irrespective of this fact. Moreover, the ADAAA clarifies and extends the meaning of the category of “major life activities” (Mondaq Business Briefing, 2008) to the list including “caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working, as well as the immune, digestive, respiratory, and circulatory systems” (Mondaq Business Briefing, 2008).
Another article under consideration is titled Commentary: ADA amendment expands protection. Its authors are Daniel O’Toole and Jovita Foster, and the essence of the article lies in the analysis of the ADA Amendments Act signed by President Bush on September 25, 2008. This article, as well as the previous one, is concerned with the comparison of the ADA and Amendments Act in respect of 5the larger level of protection for people with disabilities provided by the ADAAA. However, O’Toole and Forster are also concerned with the ambiguity of the definitions presented by the Amendments Act and state the need for respective clarifications to be given by the US Supreme Court (O’Donnel, T. & Foster, J., 2008).
The authors of the article also argue about the practical application of the principles and changes introduced by the ADAAA that comes into effect on January 1, 2009. Furthermore, the article examines the major extensions and clarifications that were made to the terms of ADA, including the definition of the term “disability” which now comes to include the state of being “substantially limited in a major life activity” and with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) to regulate the relations between employers and employees as for this definition (O’Donnel, T. & Foster, J., 2008).
Main Issues of Both Articles
Implied/Factual Impact of the Main Issues on Organization
The articles under consideration have a considerable practical implementation, especially for those people whose needs and rights are covered with the newly introduced ADAAA of 2008. The first, and the most peculiar, side of the Amendments Act is the impossibility of court claims about the so-called “reverse discrimination” (Mondaq Business Briefing, 2008) when a person sues a company for discriminating him or her for the lack of any disabilities. This is a rather useful change in the legislation and the public attitude towards the problem as far as recently the claims of the employees have come to be completely absurd which the above mentioned reverse discrimination lawsuits prove. The rights of people with disabilities should be protected but those who have no disabilities should not be entitled to benefit from the misfortunes and impairments of others.
Concerning the practical changes that organizations and companies will have to implement by the ADAA, the following points can be singled out. First of all, the statutes and handbooks of organizations will have to be correlated with the demands of the Amendments Act. Respective modifications should be made in the written documents of the companies whose employees should be informed about the recent changes in the company’s policies in time. Moreover, the managerial staff and especially the Human Resources Management of the companies should be trained specifically to match the criteria of ADAAA which among others demand more tolerant and revering treatment of employees with disabilities and applicants of the same category. The cases when the employees were refused the help or special accommodations by the employers based on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 should be reconsidered to fit the criteria of the Amendments Act of 2008 (O’Donnel, T. & Foster, J., 2008).
To start the procedure of reconsideration, Congress and the House of Representatives have reviewed the cases of the US Supreme Court that concerned the ADA definitions. For example, in the case of “Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., myopic twin sisters sued an airline under the ADA after it refused to hire them as pilots” (O’Donnel, T. & Foster, J., 2008). This case, accompanied by the case Murphy v. United Parcel Service, Inc. when a mechanic of the company had high blood pressure but could normalize it with pills for working hours, led to the amendment according to which employers still consider those people disabled who can temporarily cope with their impairments but can not eliminate them. All this shows that the ADAAA is an increase of means of protection for employees with disabilities while employers are made less protected by this act as far as its interpretation is planned to be made in favor of employees and increases considerably the number of people whom the ADAAA covers (Mondaq Business Briefing, 2008).
Text Comparison
Thus, it is obvious that the articles considered in this paper disclose the important stage in the history of the US civil rights system. However, this topic was considered by other authors and scholars among whom Raymond A. Noe with his work Employee Training and Development is one of the best examples. The author considers all the aspects that an employer should take into consideration so that to ensure the effective and prosperous performance of his or her organization. Among them, Noe (2007) enumerates the importance of skillful and properly carried out educational and training programs which consist of two major steps. Namely, they are the identification of needs of this or that employee and the determination of the rate of readiness of that employee for the training he or she is to take up. Special attention is paid by Noe to the issues of training and education of people with disabilities who should be provided with special accommodations and aids to fulfill their working functions (Noe, 2007). In these aspects, the book by Noe correlates with the thoughts expressed in the articles considered above. It is obvious for the authors of the three works that people with disabilities should be presented with means for easier working based on their impairments but discrimination towards these people should be eliminated from society.
However, there is one major point where the articles do not meet with the book. It is the amendments to the ADA that were made by the ADAAA in 2008. The point is that the last edition of the book by Noe was published in 2007, several months before the ADAAA was signed by President Bush. That is why the major points expressed by the Amendments Act are either not reflected or only predicted by Noe in his book. For example, the book predicts, although implicitly, the widening of the category of the people with disabilities, by applying to the fact that modern companies suffer serious losses paying the compensations to those employees who considered them to be discriminated on the disability basis and sued the company (Noe, 2007). Nevertheless, the very amendments and extensions to the main definitions of the ADA are not stipulated in the book. This is not surprising due to the different publication dates of sources, but this is, nevertheless, the major point of disagreement between the articles considered and the book by Raymond Noe.
So, to conclude this paper, it is necessary to state that the articles by Mondaq Business Briefing and Daniel O’Toole and Jovita Foster reflect one of the most important changes for the system of civil rights of the United States of America. The former is concerned with presenting the basic changes that the Amendments Act of 2008 will bring to the social life and spheres of employment and human resources management. Also, this paper deals with the implications of the ADAAA provisions for employers and the system of the US legislation on the whole. At the same time, the second article, along with the topics of the first article, touches upon the ambiguity in the law that the ADAAA provisions could bring and the increase in the category of people with disabilities covered by the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.
References
- Mondaq Business Briefing. (2008). The ADA Amendments Act Of 2008 Expands The Protections Of The Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990.
- Noe, R. (2007). Employee Training and Development. McGraw-Hill Education Singapore.
- O’Donnel, T. & Foster, J. (2008). Commentary: ADA amendment expands protection. Missouri Lawyers Weekly.