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These hearings will provide you with a vital source of information to assess the scope and meaning of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1989 (ADA). On behalf of the millions of citizens with disabilities, I ask you to keep in mind that for decades people with disabilities have been waiting. For decades people with disabilities have seen laws enacted by their elected representatives that prohibit discrimination for other groups of individuals. For decades, Americans with disabilities, have had to live with the realization that there are no similarly effective laws to protect them.

Today, I am proud to say, there is an emerging group-consciousness on the part of Americans with disabilities, their families, friends and advocates. This consciousness represents a mounting political activism. The over 43 million Americans our nation's largest and no longer silent minority.

Martin Luther King had a dream. We have a vision. Dr. King dreamed of an America where people are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. ADA's vision is of an America where persons are judged by their abilities, not their disabilities.

In Toward Independence, our 1986 report to Congress our vision was to shape responsible legislation by which Federal disincentives and barriers to employment are removed so that disabled Americans can go to work.

In the 1984 report to Congress by the Rehabilitation Services Administration, it was indicated that for every $1 spent to return a

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disabled person to work, $18 were returned to the tax base upon their placement. This would include not only taxes paid by the individual, but money saved from the removal of public expenditures.

The majority of persons with disabilities "not working" said they want to work. The Louis Harris poll which we sponsored in 1985, indicated that persons with disabilities in the workplace are rated "good" to "excellent" by an overwhelming majority of their employers. Disability does not mean incompetence. The perception that persons with disabilities are dependent by nature is the result of discriminatory attitudes, not the result of disability.

America cannot afford to discard citizens with disabilities. In a nation with a labor shortage, two-thirds of all disabled Americans between the ages of 16 and 64 years age are not working. No one demographic group under 65 has such a small proportion working. The two words "not working" are perhaps the truest definition of what it means to be disabled in America today.

As Louis Harris discovered in the poll commissioned by the Council in 1985, people with disabilities want to become involved in their communities as taxpaying contributors.

It is contrary to sound principles of fiscal responsibility to spend billions of Federal tax dollars to relegate people with disabilities to positions of dependency upon public support.

People with disabilities represent America's greatest untapped resource of individuals who want to work. As we all know, in America, jabs are a major source of status, dignity, and self-esteem. "What do you

do?" is often a conversational staple. To contribute to society and support yourself is a cherished precept of our American vision.

ADA sweeps into obsolescence those obstacles that limit opportunity, promote discrimination, prevent integration, restrict choice and frustrate self-help for working-aged Americans with disabilities who are unemployed. Advancing age, economic circumstances, illness, and accident will someday, according to reputable statistics, put most of us, in the category of a person with a disability. We are all potential beneficiaries of the ADA.

The goals espoused in the Americans with Disabilities Act are economically practical as well as morally correct and humanely necessary. The ADA is legislation that does away troubling historical echoes, echoes that are no longer tolerable in a society committed to equal opportunity for all its citizens.

Esteemed members of Congress, in closing, I wish to relay a message from our National Council on Disability and the over 43 million Americans with disabilities. For decades, we have retained a faith in the

reformability and adaptability of our Government. For decades we have been told to have patience, but patience is not an inexhaustible commodity. People with disabilities have waited long enough. America has waited long enough. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) must be enacted now.

The vision of equality for 43 million of Americans with disabilities now rests with you.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify. The National Council on Disability looks forward to working with you on this most important piece

of legislation.

Chairman OWENS. Thank you. Brother Philip Nelan, the representative of the National Restaurant Association.

Brother NELAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members of the Committee. It is an honor to appear before your committee to state an overview of the National Restaurant Association's program for promoting the employment of people with disabilities.

I am Brother Philip Nelan, Director of Handicapped Employment Services for the National Restaurant Association's project with Industry. I have been associated with this program since its inception 11 years ago. I am a member of the Order of Brothers of the Christian Schools, and for 9 years earlier in my career, served as president of Manhattan College in New York.

During the last 11 years, the National Restaurant Association has promoted a program to encourage the industry to look to the benefit of employing persons with disabilities. The program, on the one hand, aims to provide employers with willing and qualified workers to fill plentiful jobs in this era of relatively low unemployment rates.

The program, on the other hand, gives a fair chance to people with physical and mental disabilities to fill jobs they are qualified for and to find in work a basis for greater independence and an incentive to sense their human dignity.

In this effort, our program takes us into close relationships with many organizations serving disabled persons such as the National Rehabilitation Association, the National Association of Rehabilitation Facilities, the National Association of Retarded Citizens, the newly forming coalition of organizations serving deaf people, sponsored by the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, New York, and Goodwill Industries, Easter Seals, and so on. State vocational rehabilitation offices are our primary contacts for disseminating information about foodservice job-openings within the state. In addition more than 400 private training agencies form a second line of resources for discovering qualified workers. We have supplied promotional and educational materials to induce these agencies to develop curricula in foodservice for their disabled trainees.

To discover job-openings, we have conducted pollings of the National Restaurant Association's memberships, the high volume independents, the chains, franchisees, and in the May issue of "Restaurants USA," with a circulation of 27,000, we supplied a tear-out reply mailer, a request form for information about rehabilitation training and placement.

These efforts have returned thousands of job opportunities for the impaired and have established firmer relationships between the training services for disabled people and the industry.

Aside from the well-known programs of the Marriott Corporation and McDonald's Corporation to recruit and train workers from pools of disabled people, other foodservice organizations have likewise adopted policies to attract this untraditional sector of the population into their labor forces.

Among them we should cite some samples of industry programs in which we have had a role in developing: Kentucky Fried Chicken. It has made formal effort to link its 7500 units to the training

programs of the Association of Rehabilitation Facilities in 26 states.

Pizza Huts' unique plan to hire 2000 persons with impairments in these three current years by linking its 6600 units with local sources of employees with disabilities.

The Imperial Hotels, a franchisee of 50 various hotels in 23 states recently adopted a program through the office of the vice president for Human Resources to relate the managers and training programs in their areas.

Lettuce Leaf, a small chain, only 9 years old, in Missouri, has maintained a policy to hire developmentally disabled of whom its president writes, "All of these young persons are wonderful. They are reliable-constantly on the job."

Radisson Hotels promoted and have carried out a well-defined policy to employ persons with disabilities through the office of vice president for Human Resources.

Arby's of South Florida through its regional office has found alliance with the Florida Vocational Rehabilitation Services to recruit employees for its 26 units.

Friendly's Restaurants actively initiated a company-wide program and succeeds in engaging the managers of its 840 units along the eastern seaboard to employ persons with disabilities.

ARA Service, a huge conglomerate of hospitality services in restaurants, institutions and business offices, employing 120,000, is now compiling an instructional guide on all sources of potential employees including the disabled to inform its management.

General Mills Restaurant Corporation, finds for its Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants that rehabilitation training and placement services are available resources to fill their job openings.

Walt Disney World Swan at Lake Buena Vista is currently recruiting 800 persons with the assistance of the Florida Vocational Rehabilitation Services for its labor force in its new operation to open November first.

So our liaison program between the public and private sectors links foodservice operators, both large and small, including single unit owners, throughout the country to the sources of employees among organizations serving persons with disabilities.

Having access to public and private vocational training services, the employer finds potential resources of productive and loyal workers. Ideally, through training program counselors, the employer knows beforehand the potentials, skills, attitudes, backgrounds of these people.

Employers enjoy a new alliance through the professional counselor who makes job analyses and select qualified candidates who will succeed in performing the specific jobs.

The only available data on the number of people with impairments newly employed annually in the foodservice industry is compiled by the Statistical Division of the Rehabilitation Services Administration at the Department of Education.

The Division receives annual reports of the rehabilitated and job placed who are subsidized under state vocational rehabilitation services, which, in turn, are 80 percent subsidized by Federal funding.

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