EEOC: A company that helps people with disabilities violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

Yesterday, I read (here) about a lawsuit that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed against a non-profit. That non-profit company provides job opportunities to people with disabilities. The EEOC alleges that the non-profit “violated federal law when it failed to provide reasonable accommodations that would have allowed an employee to continue working as a janitor.”

Here’s more from the EEOC’s press release:

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit,  the employee, as a result of his cognitive disability, had trouble navigating  certain interactions with other employees and members of the public and needed  additional training or job coaching to properly understand the rules he was  required to follow. Instead, the EEOC said, his supervisor gave him written warnings, which the employee was unable to read or understand. When the employee said that he needed someone to explain the warnings to him, the  supervisor disregarded the request. As a result, the employee continued to  experience the same difficulties and was ultimately fired, the agency charged.

This sounds bad. But, why does it violate the law? At least according to the EEOC:

Under the Americans with  Disabilities Act (ADA), when an employer is aware that an employee with a  disability needs an accommodation in order to perform the essential functions of his job, it must provide an accommodation, unless doing so would be an undue hardship. An accommodation may in­clude job coaching, additional training,  modifications to the employer’s standard operating procedures, or other measures that would allow the employee to do his job successfully. The employer is required to engage in an interactive process with the employee to determine if there is a way to accommodate the employee’s disability.

The EEOC has deprived me of all of my good employer takeaways.

You win this round, EEOC!