Name: Jeffrey Klare
Company: Equality Staffing

My reason for hiring people with disabilities is because they are human beings, they are a 
very proactive part of our society, they go to college, they have families and no one has a 
right to say you can't be part of something.  So if a person comes into a workplace with a 
skill set, with an education and can be competitive in the employment process we need to 
make sure that we include them.  There are no new consumers in this country, they are a 
vital backbone of our economy and given the opportunity they can be a backbone of our 
places of employment.

The impact on our business do to the inclusionary process that we've put in place for 
people with disabilities has been overwhelming.  Corporations work at hyper speed 
sometimes they don't take the opportunity to take a step back and say how can we include 
this group of people, we as a company have done that, we work very closely with the 
corporations that we assist to making sure that this cast is as far and wide ranged as 
possible, we concern ourselves with inclusion.  So in a few words my company has gone 
a great distance to make sure that people with disabilities are part of the process, no one 
is to be left out, we include everyone, we make sure that whether we recruit at Howard 
University or Virginia Commonwealth University that we make sure that all of the 
communities that have to be addressed are addressed.

The concerns that we had in terms of hiring people with disabilities was nominal, it 
wasn't really our concern.  My company specializes in consulting with the Fortune 1000 
and we realized they had concerns and we needed to overcome something very simple 
and it was the fear of something they didn't know, the fear of the unknown and by putting 
a person who maybe in their lifetime never thought that they came in touch with a person 
with a disability.  To us it is about education, it's about putting a person with a disability 
next to a person who maybe doesn't have a disability and creating a peer relationship so 
that everybody feels comfortable in the same location at the same time, because clearly 
people with disabilities, I wont use the work special because there is nothing special 
about the person other than they have the ability to do a job, earn a days pay and we need 
to integrate them into the workplace so that it becomes a vital part of the organization.

In putting people with disabilities to work and getting our front line managers to be fully 
accepting of that we need to look back historically to other challenges that other diversity 
communities had faced.  Many years ago African Americans were not put into the 
workplace and today the largest population that is taking hold of the workplace is the 
Latino community, is the African American community, women have made major strives 
in furthering the cause of women in the workplace, we should not forget that people with 
disabilities across the board at some point in our lives we all will become a person with a 
disability.  The economy has dictated that we are going to work longer, we are going to 
work harder and we are going to get older and as the baby boomer generation has to stay 
and work in the employment arena because our 401Ks have become 201Ks and we need 
to keep that process moving forward.  More issues of people with disabilities in the 
workplace will come out, we need to make sure that every employer understands that we 
are just talking about competition and giving a wider net to be thrown out to make sure 
inclusion is part of the issue.

We retain employees with disabilities, it's a pretty simple process to us, they are people, 
and they are treated no differently than any other employee.  We will provide any 
accommodation at any cost because that is part of the situation but in order to make that 
situation work is that you can't have separate communities within your workplace, it has 
to be a harmonious relationship for everyone.  So what we offer one employee, we offer 
all employees; we offer their families the same thing.  For a long period of time people 
with disabilities felt uncomfortable going into the workplace, they received Social 
Security, there's nothing social about Social Security and there certainly isn't anything 
secure about Social Security the last thing I want to do when I go to a party is identify 
myself as someone who is getting $434 dollars a month and I'm happy watching Opera 
every day.  That is not what reality dictates, the first question I was asked when I was in 
high school by my mother was when are you going to get a job, it's what we are, it's who 
we are, we spend more time in the workplace than any other place in the world, what we 
need to do is make sure everyone is treated fairly and as long as we do that we will 
overcome the barriers towards employment.

We recruit people with disabilities by being where people with disabilities gather.  So we 
are very proactive in making sure the university settings across the state of New York, 
that we have a presence there.  Creating a true partnership with not-for-profit agencies 
with publications that promote employment opportunities for people with disabilities are 
clearly on the radar screen, we have to make sure that the net is cast far enough out and 
across the board so that whether it be an entry level person or an experienced professional 
that they are welcomed in the workplace, that the retention issue is met, and that the 
accommodation issue is met as well.  We concern ourselves with the inclusion process 
and we are not about leaving anyone out of the process.