Rant - Opinion: April 2010 Archives

I'm in an anti-Mac rut these days.

Getting ready to give a fancy presentation to medical types and just realized that Pages has no way to type an italic x with an over bar over it as in arithmetic-mean (x=1.0). The image below is a GIF picture -- you can't write the x on the left hand side of the equation in Pages!

Arugula!

What century are we in!  It turns out that x-bar isn't a standard Unicode glyph and so programs have to support it themselves, which Pages doesn't.

I know Steve Jobs doesn't do math, but is some basic math support too much to ask? I'm not asking for LaTex, but I am asking to not be made to seem absolutely daft.

I was trying to access the Department of Labor (USA) in order to get information on employment conditions for people with disabilities and the DOL.gov site requires a password -- even for the top page?

Weird. I ended up getting the data from BLS.gov.

Cornell's ILR school has organized the BLS data in a much more accessible fashion: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/edi/disabilitystatistics/

I've recently been looking at recent statistics issued by the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) regarding Americans with Disabilities employment discrimination cases.

All charges of employment discrimination under the ADA have to be channelled through the EEOC so this data can be considered authoritative. Of course, many claims are settled even before they go to the EEOC so that data is not visible.

The data is available here: http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/ada-charges.cfm

Appalling Figures

In 2009, there were 18,776 charges of employment discrimination under the ADA that were resolved by the EEOC. Of those, 11% were settled and 6.5% were withdrawn with benefits. Not all settlements are positive for plaintiffs, but let's be optimistic and say that 100% were. Of the mere 5.1% of cases that EEOC found reasonable cause, only 2.2% of cases were successful.

So a whopping 11+6.5+2.2 = 19.7% of cases brought before the EEOC had positive outcomes for the plaintiffs.

(The EEOC counts 22.6% as "merit resolutions," but I'm unsure how they get their data since the missing 3.1% would likely be the 3.0% of unsuccessful "reasonable cause" claims).

Or put another way, 80.3% were found for the defendants, the employers.

Put another way, only 5.1% of cases were found to have reasonable cause to go to court and the EEOC won just less than half of these, resulting in only 2.2% of cases there were actually "won" by the EEOC in litigation.

Put another way, it sucks to be disabled in the United States.

What about the big bucks won by "professional litigants?" The EEOC shows that $67.8 million in benefits were won in 2009. With a total of 2065 + 1217 + 408 = 3690 people settling or winning benefits, that's an average of just over $18,000 each.

Not enough to pay your lawyer, or even six months of wages.

Like I said, it sucks to be disabled in the United States.

Or put another way, it is great to be an employer in the United States. Plenty of workforce flexibility.