รายละเอียดกระทู้

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-05/17/content_16507608.htm BEIJING - The China Disabled Persons' Federation on Friday established a center for disability prevention, control and research. The center will focus on preventing disabilities, distributing recovery information, building a database for the disabled and conducting policy research, as well as preventing disability-related complications and reducing degrees of disability, the center's director Li Jianjun said. China has more than 85 million disabled people. The number is expected to exceed 160 million by 2050, according to the center. May 07, 2013 Historic EEOC verdict: $240M for disability discrimination and severe abuse http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Discrimination/Disabilities-ADA/Historic-EEOC-verdict-240-M-for-disability-discrim An Iowa jury today awarded the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) damages totaling $240 million—the largest verdict in the EEOC’s history—for disability discrimination and severe abuse. The jury agreed with the EEOC that Hill County Farms, doing business as Henry’s Turkey Service, subjected a group of 32 men with intellectual disabilities to severe abuse and discrimination for a period between 2007 and 2009, after 20 years of similar mistreatment. The company is based in Texas, but the work and abuse occurred in West Liberty and Atalissa, Iowa. The jury awarded each of the men $2 million in punitive damages and $5.5 million in compensatory damages, according to the EEOC press release. This verdict follows a September 2012 order from the district court judge that Henry’s Turkey pay the men $1.3 million for unlawful disability-based wage discrimination, bringing the total judgment to $241.3 million. According to the EEOC lawsuit, Henry’s Turkey exploited these workers, whose jobs involved eviscerating turkeys, because their intellectual disabilities made them particularly vulnerable and unaware of the extent to which their legal rights were being denied. The affected men lived in Muscatine County, Iowa, where they worked for 20 years as part of a contract between Henry’s Turkey and West Liberty Foods, an Iowa turkey processing plant. “This historic verdict marks one of the EEOC’s finest moments in its ongoing efforts to combat employment discrimination, especially discrimination against vulnerable and historically underserved populations,” said EEOC General Counsel David Lopez. “The fact that the jury rendered the largest verdict ever obtained by the EEOC says volumes about the severity of the violation and it illustrates this agency’s resolve to vindicate the rights of all discrimination victims.” Specifically, the EEOC presented evidence that for years the owners and staffers of Henry’s Turkey subjected the workers to abusive verbal and physical harassment; restricted their freedom of movement; and imposed other harsh terms and conditions of employment such as requiring them to live in sub-standard living conditions, and failing to provide adequate medical care when needed. Such abuse violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, including intellectual disabilities, in terms and conditions of employment and wages and bars disability-based harassment. The EEOC filed its lawsuit after first attempting to settle the case through its conciliation process. In addition to the EEOC’s disability-based harassment and discrimination verdict, the EEOC earlier won a $1.3 million wage discrimination judgment when Senior U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Wolle found that, rather than the total of $65 dollars per month Henry’s Turkey paid to the disabled workers while contracted to work on an evisceration line at the plant, the employees should have been compensated at the average wage of $11-12 per hour, reflecting pay typically earned by workers without intellectual disabilities who performed the same or similar work. The EEOC’s wage claims for each worker ranged from $28,000 to $45,000 in lost income over the course of their last two years before the operation was shut down in February 2009. Protecting vulnerable workers from disparate pay, harassment, and other discriminatory policies is one of the priorities identified in the EEOC’s Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP).