VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY APRIL 19, 2007 1:00 P.M. CT WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION & DISABILITY Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. >> DR. McMAHON: Thank you. It's a kind and generous introduction. It's a pleasure to be here and working with my colleagues at the Rehabilitation and Research Training Center on Workplace Supports and Job Retention here at Virginia Commonwealth University. I'm here, in part, to represent the disability and business technical assistance centers and we can be reached for additional information through our website at www.ADATA.org. Finally, I want to make it very clear on what gives me access to the data I'm able to speak of today is a unique relationship I have with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I work for the EEOC on an interagency agreement between the Commission and my usual and customary employer, the Commonwealth of Virginia, VCU. As an employee, I'm allowed access to the data, which we analyze here at VCU and around the country, and the finding from which we'll share with you later today. So I want to thank my colleagues at the EEOC as well. As my VCU and my DBTAC. I'm speaking as a professor of rehabilitation at VCU. The findings and opinions you'll hear expressed today are mine personally and professionally and not the ones of the organizations that sponsor my being here today. We're here today to talk about the workplace discrimination and disability subject, and the national EEOC ADA research project in particular. I appreciate that there's a varying degree of literacy about the Americans with disability act. For today, the only thing you really need to know and understand is this one sentence. We're here to talk about Title I of the ADA, the employment provisions. And the sentence reads, all personnel actions must be unrelated to the existence or consequence of disability. As defined in the act. To repeat, all personnel actions must be unrelated to the existence or consequence of disability as defined in the act. That's, perhaps, the best one sentence summary of the Americans with disabilities act, at least the employment provisions, that I've ever come across. It's sufficient background for you to enable you to appreciate the rest of the subject matter we're going to talk about today. We also want to set a context here that as vocational rehabilitation professionals, we're very interested in the subject of workplace discrimination and disability. We're interested in all impediments to employment, everything that serves to work against labor force participation of people with disabilities in the American workplace is something that is troublesome to us. We are not naive to the fact that workplace discrimination is one such barrier, but by no means is it necessarily the most important barrier and by no means is it the only barrier. There are many other things we study here at VCU and elsewhere including financial disincentives to work, instability in economy, labor market fluctuations, the lack of availability of healthcare, the outsourcing of jobs overseas things like prospective guest worker programs. All these may have a potential to have an adverse impact on people with disabilities in labor force participation. We understand workplace discrimination is not the only barrier. We believe however, until recently, it has been the least researched barrier. It is long overdue that we're able to pay this kind of attention to really studying the problem. Our view of it here of the project is that workplace discrimination is something like a disease, like a virus. We know it's a problem. We know people with disabilities don't appreciate it. We know employers don't appreciate it and will go to great lengths to avoid engaging in it, albeit inadvertently. We never had an opportunity until recently to get the virus under microscope and understand the color, hue, depth, scent. The more we understand it, as the case with anything bad for us, like a disease, are the better position we are to minimize it and combat it. Let's talk for a moment about what you will find in our database that we have. We deal with allegations. So the unit of study for us is an allegation. A person comes to EEOC and brings a charge of discrimination on the basis of disability under Title I of the ADA. We only deal with closed allegations. So if an allegation is in process, as recently -- has recently been filed or currently under investigation by the EEOC, that is not something we could study. We deal with allegations that are reported to, investigated by, and closed by the EEOC. So we do not study allegations under this project that are processed by the fair employment practice agency in your state. Nor do we study allegations that are referred to litigation where the validity of the allegation is established by a judge or a jury. Nor do we study allegations that involve the matters of retaliation. This allows us a pretty substantial balance of over 369,000 Title I closed allegations over a period of 13.2 years, until the end of October of -- excuse me, the end of September of 2005. So every allegation that we study, over a third of a million of allegations, has an outcome. We know if the EEOC has determined that that allegation has merit, which means there's reason to believe that discrimination has occurred, or if the EEOC included the -- concluded the allegation does not have merit, this is important to us as researchers and for common sense reasons. It is certainly one thing to study allegations, which is a charge that discrimination has occurred, a belief on behalf of the charging party that discrimination has occurred, but that's very different, isn't it, than an outcome that says the EEOC concurs, yes, and point in fact, in their opinion after thorough investigation and review of the facts, discrimination did indeed take place. So if you think about an allegation, our unit of study, as the charging party's perception that discrimination has occurred or coined it occurred and contrast that with the outcome or resolution or the closure that is the determination that yes, there is evidence that discrimination occurred or there is not, you can see there's a big difference. This database is large. It's recently updated to 369,000 it grows at a rate of about 5% each year. What information do we have in the database? Well, we have information about the people who file the allegation. These are known in EEOC nomenclature as charging parties. Most of us refer to them as consumers or individuals with disabilities. These are the people who bring the claims or allegations that discrimination may have occurred. What do we know about them? We know their race, their gender, their age, and the specific type of impairment that they may have. We deal with about a field of about 45 unique and known impairments. What else is in the database? Well, it would be nice to have information about the employers, the group against whom the charges are made. In EEOC jargon these are referred to as respondents. What do we know about the respondents? We know what industry they're in. We've now recently reclassified all the industry codes to conform with the 2002 version of the Department of Labor's North American industry classification system. So really we have over 15 unique industry groupings more current and reflective of the world of work in the United States in current times. So we know what industry the employer is engaged in. We know approximately the number of employees. So we know if it's a small, medium or large-sized employer. And we know the region of the country that the employer is in. Sometimes this is the department of education region, which case we divided the country into ten parts, sometimes it's a US census bureau region which we divided the country into four parts. This allows us to look at does geography matter? Does it matter where the employer operates in terms of the level of discriminatory behavior involved. The next thing is discriminatory issues, where the charging party engages with or meets the employer around an allegation of discrimination. There are 25 unique types of discriminatory behavior in which there is reasonable amount of activity, and these we refer to as issues. Issues is perhaps best understood in terms of one or two examples. An issue might be, for example, that I allege my employer has unlawfully discharged me or terminated me. I might allege my employer failed to accommodate me. I may allege my employer has not given me a fair salary increase. Or denied me access to training, or disciplined me for reasons related to existence or consequence of my disability. And not on the basis of my performance or abilities. These are all examples of issues I think you understand that there are many things one could allege with respect to the specific nature of discriminatory behavior that is believed to have occurred, and this is what we mean by the term issue. Last but not least, we have the matter of outcome or resolution. As we said before, this is EEOC's final determination when an investigation is closed, does the allegation have merit, or does the allegation not have merit? In a finding of merit, the EEOC has positive that discrimination has occurred. In a finding of nonmerit, the EEOC is positive there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that discrimination has occurred. If you look at the next interesting graphic, it's a pretty busy graphic, you begin to get a feel for it. I appreciate that it's a lot -- there's a lot of small type on this. I can read this to you, but rather than do that, let me try to make this point. In the green quadrant in your upper left-hand corner, you have information about the claimant or charging party. Again, their age, sex, race or ethnicity and specific type of disability that they may have, whether it's for example diabetes or association of disability. We have all those. In the upper right-hand corner we have the employer, industry code, size, number of workers. In the middle at the top in the pink we have representation that we know something about the place or the region where discrimination is believed to occur. All these variables are wrapped around the issue. The issue is the type of discrimination and we've organized the types of discrimination into job acquisition or getting a job, the left hand blue box. The far right hand blue box is keeping a job or job retention. The middle box represents issues that pertain to working conditions. So you have, if you will, front end employment issues, like hiring and testing, and access to training programs. Keeping a job refers to job retention issues like discharge or involuntary retirement or being laid off or failure to reinstate an employee after they've been away for illness or injury. In the middle we have things that relate to the nature of the work or working conditions like wages and benefits and work assignments promotion, demotion, discipline, suspension, so on. Those are examples of the issues we study. On the right-hand side in the bottom you have a blue box that talks about outcome. You can see different types that favor the individual, they favor the charging party, then these are outcomes that show merit. On the right you see types that do not favor the individual but favor the employer, these are nonmerit resolutions. You can read those yourself or in your own way or time. Suffice it to say when you have this number of variables and this number of factors in each variable and studying the combinations and permeations of these, there are literally hundreds, or thousands of studies that come to a better and clear understanding of the nature of workplace discrimination in America. Let's get a bit more specific in terms of what we have available to us and we'll get to some more interesting preliminary findings we have to date. First of all, with respect to the 45 impairments that are possible in our data set, we organized them into six groups. The general disability, there's about 200,000 of those. We have about 50,000 allegation of psychiatric impairment. 7,000 allegations of chemical dependency. 70,000 allegation in which the disability is unknown or it's not coded. In other words, it's a rare condition or disorder that doesn't exist in our coding system. We have 44,000 allegations of people who've been regarded as or have a record of disability, but are not currently disabled at the time of the discriminatory behavior. And we have about three and a half thousand allegations against associates of persons with disability. Those of you familiar with the Americans of disability act and its definition of disability, knows that the law is intended to protect not just people currently disabled at the present time, but people who have a record of disability, may mistakenly be regarded as a person with disability, or a close associate or relative of a person with a disability. The way we would do for example a disability specific study is pretty such. Under the general disability rubric, for example, that first large category we showed you, this has about 200,000 allegations and includes almost all known physical sensory and neurological impairments. So we call that group GenDis. What the unique about the experience of people with diabetes in the workplace, we extract the information on those people and compare and contrast them statistically speaking with the rest of the general disability population. We would not compare people with diabetes to substance abusers. Obviously you can set up many different kinds of comparison groups. In some cases we do that for different scientific reasons, but this is generally how we create what you call a disability specific profile of workplace discrimination in America. Our psychiatric group of about 50,000, is broken down into people with anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar illness or schizophrenia or other psychiatric impairments. Our chemical dependency group is about 7,000, it's a low number, deriving of people with chemical dependence. Our other category where the impairment is not known, we know they're physical, sensory or neurological is very large. It's 70,000. These may be people that don't disclose a disability, their disability is not -- it's not able to be coded among the 45 impairments we normally study. Relationship people with disabilities again, 3500. We have the definition here. Record of or regarded as disabled, 44,000. There are seven types of studies we do and as soon as we review this slide, we'll get into some of the findings. I think you can see what's pretty interesting here is we can create disability specific patterns or profiles of workplace discrimination. For example, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, orthopedic problems involving injury to the back. HIV. Mental retardation, we're able to show what is unique about workplace discrimination related to the nature of specific disability or impairment involved. We're able to look at interaction of workplace discrimination and disability with gender, age or race. Very important to our employers that we serve as our clients and customers, is that we're able to do industry-specific profiles. So what is workplace discrimination look like in healthcare? Or manufacturing? Or in the hotel/motel industry or the restaurant industry? These are fascinating questions we think will bring employers to the table again to get a second generation of ADA training when the training can be offered and provided to them in industry-specific terms. We look at the impact of the employer size. Does it matter if they have 50 employees versus 2,000 employees? And we look at the impact of geography. We're also able to do analyses of specific issues. The first and only issue we've studied to date is the subject of disability harassment. We have very interesting findings that help us to come to an understanding of disability harassment. We know there are 25 other issues in which there's substantial degree of discrimination activity and we'll be able to take a close look at those as well. Where much has been written and said about Supreme Court decisions and they effect about the implementation of the patient, the Sutton decision, we're able to look at EEOC activity before and after the decisions to see if, in point and fact, it is true that the Supreme Court decisions have been a bad effect of the ADA implementation. We're able to look at a distinction between an allegation of discrimination and merit outcome. What drives? What pushes or relates to difference between an allegation and a merit outcome? A charge of discrimination has occurred and a finding of fact of discrimination has occurred. We think that's a very interesting legal and practical question. So now let's get a feel for specific studies and findings. Before I do, just one caveat. When we say there are no statistical differences between this and that in the data set, what we mean is we do not mean there's no discrimination. We're now going into the findings, so we're going into the world of discrimination, the university or population of a third of a million closed cases of discrimination. No differences does not mean no discrimination. It means there's nothing unique about the discrimination in the targeted group versus the comparison group. I would like the approach the way I do with the students. Let me ask you as if you were, you know, graduate student in our ADA course. In disability world most allegations of workplace discrimination are resolved in favor of the person with disability. Well, many of you know this already, but the answer is no, that's not true. Most allegations are resolved in favor of the respondent or the employer. More specifically, the way we distinguish between merit and non-merit, almost 80% of all allegations of workplace discrimination under Title I of the ADA are resolved in favor of the employer. Only 22%, as a matter of fact, are found to have merit, which means the finding is in favor of the person with the disability. A couple of very important points to make about this is this pattern is very similar to other civil rights statutes. If you look at other groups protected, for example, by the civil rights act of 1964, African Americans, Hispanics, religious minorities or women, you find this pretty much holds true. It's neither better nor worse than what we find in affirmative action or antidiscrimination laws in again with respect to employment. It is what it is. If people go to court, their chances of prevailing are lower if they're the plaintiff or charging party with the disability and the percentage of victories in court falls below 5%. Generally speaking, people with disabilities experience far more favorable outcomes when the matter is taken to and resolved by the EEOC. True or false? Because they lack resources, small employers are more likely to engage in discriminatory behavior. After all, it stands to reason, doesn't it? A small employer doesn't have a fully functioning human resources unit, a vice president of human resources, an ADA coordinator when you have 15, 20, 25 or 50 workers, you're not likely to have full-time professionals involved in the prevention of workplace discrimination for people with disabilities or any other protected class. Certainly that must be true. Our database on over a third of a million closed allegations says that is not true. While employers in the size of 15 to 100 have been accused 56,000 times of ADA Title I violations, employers larger than 500 have been charged with such allegations even more. So this is a counterintuitive finding and I think an interesting one. It's particularly important when you understand that less than 20% of American workers work for employers with a workforce of larger than 500. So when you have a minority of workers in your employ, but a larger number of allegations of discrimination, it suggests that perhaps our prevention efforts in workplace discrimination are well -- best directed at the larger employers. True or false? Disability world most workplace discrimination is related to hiring? We would hope this would be true. As we proceed out into the world of work and into the consumer organizations to train on disability, we talk so much on our training day about hiring. Unfortunately, this also is not the case. This is the hit parade of issues that outline the nature and scope of workplace discrimination. If you look at these, you have about the top seven or eight issues. They account for 74% of all workplace discrimination in America. Even though there's 25 issues that show some activity, these handful explain 3/4 of all allegations. Far and away, most allegations involve unlawful termination, followed by reasonable accommodation, disability harassment, terms and conditions of employment, hiring, matters of discipline and matters of constructive discharge. If you had constructive discharge on the far right to termination on the far left, you actually get 112,000 out of 369,000 allegations, about 30% involving matters of termination. Constructive discharge for those who are not really experts in matters of personnel basically means creating terms, conditions and set of circumstances for an employ that, in their opinion, in the employer's opinion, forced them to resign. What we might call an employment world turning up the burners or putting up the heat on somebody, making their work life such that they voluntarily resign. After they do, they'll file an allegation that they really did not voluntarily resign, but the employer found these constructive matters in which to discharge me. It's another form of termination. That's really pretty interesting. What does this mean in simple terms? Yes, hiring is important as -- in terms of building the -- increasing the representation of people with disabilities in the workforce. We don't want discrimination. We want more people with disabilities, qualified people with disabilities hired, everybody does. In terms of measurable discriminatory, it's rather small. It's in the top 10 but represents 6 or 7% of the total database of closed allegations. More important are issues related to the quality of work but most important are issues relating to the currently employed workforce of people with disabilities or people who acquire disabilities while at work or during their working years and are trying to keep their job. Workplace discrimination is not all about job retention but it's a big, big issue. Again, this pattern of workplace discrimination that we observed is very much the same if you look at other protected classes. Of course you won't see reasonable accommodation many the civil rights act. That's specific to the ADA, but termination and harassment are typically one and two and hiring falls in somewhere else down the line. I think it's easy to understand why, is it not? If I did not get a salary increase by VCU that I felt was fair this year if instead of my 3% I got 2.5%, I might file a complaint of discrimination because I'm not very attractive or overweight or old or something, but probably not. However, if I feel I'm unlawfully terminated, I'm far more likely to file a complaint of discrimination, a formal complaint, am I not? Because, well, number one, what do I have to lose? I've already been fired. Number two, of course there's something so severe and final about the act and it may adversely affect my opportunities for future employment. So it is really human nature that people will file complaints more frequently about unlawful termination than any other subject. That does not necessarily mean there's more of it, but there's certainly more reporting of it. Okay. Very good. True or false? Consistent with social psychology research, workplace discrimination is more prevalent when it involves people with behavioral disabilities? Psychiatric problems or problems of addiction? Well, the social psychology research and much of the vocational rehabilitation research suggests this is true. What are the facts when we attempt to measure this in terms of actual workplace discrimination? The facts are there are higher levels of reported discrimination and higher levels of actual discrimination, physical, sensory or neurological, contrary to the theories of social stigma and disability. True or false? Excuse me. Let's try multiple choice. Which group experiences the highest level of actual workplace discrimination? Is it people with mental retardation? People with missing limbs? Perhaps it's people that experience disfigurement? Or epilepsy? Or HIV? Let me begin by saying most impairment groups have two or three issues on which they have significant difference from their comparison group. To repeat, most impairment groups have two or three issues in which they have significant differences from their comparison groups in terms of the level of actual discrimination. People with HIV A.I.D.S., however, are positive on 16 of 25 top discriminatory issues. Let me repeat that. People with HIV or A.I.D.S. have significant differences in workplace discrimination that are higher than the comparison group on 16 out of the top 25 issues. Overall, they have merit rates instead of 22%, that are 32%. On matters of insurance and discrimination in insurance benefits, they have merit rates as high as 61%. On matters of other benefits, they have merits rates as high as 54%. And they're significantly higher than the comparison group of a general disability population on 14 other issues. There is no group -- we have not studied every impairment group, but we do not expect to find another group that experiences this much workplace discrimination, not only in their perception or allegations about discrimination, but in the findings of fact and merit resolutions. Let's look at disability harassment, for example. This means bothering, tormenting, troubling, ridiculing or harassing an employ. It's the same as sexual, but because of -- instead of gender it's disability. It involves things you understand, jokes, epithets, graffiti, these kinds of harassments. All of us agree who do human resources work and study employment, that harassment is a very insidious process. Well, what impairment group reports the most disability-related harassment? Spinal cord injury? Hearing impairment? Mental retardation? Traumatic brain injury? And the answer is, it's a bit of a trick question, the bottom three. Mental retardation, hearing impairment, and traumatic brain injury. And as we came to study this really insidious manner of harassment, ever bit as insidious, hurtful, harmful or devastating as sexual harassment, don't you find it even more insidious when you come to discover the top three populations that experience disability harassment might be compromised in their ability to appreciate what's happening to them and to understand that harassment is even occurring? There's another example here of database integrity that has to do with disfigurement. We have a small population of people disfigured from burns. They have problems of harassment and nonwage benefits. They had problems in retail and service industries. Retail requires a lot of public contact, customer contact, visibility and employers may not want people disfigured in those types of positions. We found that they had slightly lower merit rates. Again, almost every time we do an impairment related study, the database tells us things, our findings are things that make intuitive sense to us. This speaks to the integrity of the database. The most important thing here is for people with disfigurement, what do you think is most predicted of actual discrimination? Is it the industry of the employer? The race of the person? Is it the size of the employer? Is it the discrimination issue its, the region of the country? None of these. Another trick question, but none of these. What drives actual discrimination, merit resolutions for people disfigured as from burns? Their gender. Men who are or become disfigured go back to work and do not experience workplace discrimination anywhere near in proportion to the experience of females. So this, again, shows the interaction of disability with other personal characteristics and how important it is and interesting things one can learn when you look at disability under a microscope. Let's take a moment at other types of studies we can do, such as the impact of Supreme Court decision. Very famous series of court decisions known as the Sutton trilogy came down around the midsummer of 1989. They -- the studies decided that substantially limit nothing the definition of disability must consider mitigating circumstances. People in the disability community are very, very concerned about this because it can reduce the number of people eligible for discrimination. If you look at conditions like diabetes, depression, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, in which you have limitations but these can be alleviated by medications, orthotic is or psychological judgment, the Supreme Court says you may sacrifice the protections of the act because your impairment is really no big deal if it is largely corrected or correctible. So we call this the Sutton catch 22. People with diabetes have episodes but they're controlled with insulin. What if that person is unfairly considered unfit to work but not impaired enough to be protected by the ADA? This is the difficult position that the Supreme Court has put many people with disabilities in. The national council on disability summarizes it this way, the Supreme Court substance on mitigating measures deprives the individual of the right to maintain an ADA action because such a person is not eligible for protection. These individuals may be -- this is a big concern. What does our research find? In the Americans with diabetes association, it was found people would stop filing complaints or when they filed they couldn't win. If you look at the database before and after the Sutton decision, you find the third row is the most compelling. That people with diabetes filed 68 allegations a month before the decision but certainly were not deterred by Sutton in any way, shape or form and filed 114 allegations per month after the Sutton decision. Not only that, the merit of the allegations went up from 19% to 26% post Sutton . So was the Americans with diabetes association correct to suggest after Sutton discriminators may be emboldened? Apparently they were correct. Were the plaintiffs discouraged? Apparently not. Nor was the EEOC because as complaints were brought forward, the process ensued, the investigations ensued, and people with diabetes not only continued to prevail, but at a much higher rate. So there was a president who passed away recently famous for saying facts are stub born things. Before we jump to all kinds of conclusions about the impact of the Supreme Court, we need to look -- it's -- at various Supreme Court decisions, we need to look at facts. Diabetes is a special case in the sense that has an extremely large and aggressive consumer organization that keeps its public informed, it's constituency informed and ADA lit rat and proactive. That may be an exceptional group that studied but an interesting study nonetheless. Please also keep in mind when we have findings about a particular industry, we studied healthcare so far and manufacturing and we're about to study the hotel/motel industry with our partners in the region III disability and business technical assistance center. There are many, many favorable findings about industries as well. When you find an industry that has a lower level of reported or actual discrimination, either against a particular group or in general, you certainly want to reinforce the positives, acknowledge them, shine a light on them and give them an award, and replicate this. These data are not used for punitive purposes or to find bad guys, if you will, but also to find good guys and good industries and best practices in ADA Title I that can be replicated. In closing I want to say a few words about the project to date. We have 15 lead investigators. We have 50 people that have been involved in the publication of our studies to date. Our investigators are at 9 universities throughout the country and 40 studies published or in press, and an additional 10 in preparation at this time. Four people have completed dissertations using our database. Three of them at the VCU and one at the University of Maryland. And we expected to do at least five studies in our project in 2007 and for each of the next four or five years. Our support comes from four different grants, three of which have been provided by the national institute of disability and rehabilitation research and one by the MS Society. The entire process in terms of participating with a researcher is voluntary. It is very business like and professional in terms of selection and approval of research protocols and the assistance and support we provide to researchers. We have close linkages and are monitored closely in our work by the EEOC to ensure that no breech of confidentiality occurs in terms of either the identification of a single charging party or the identification of a single employer. Where are these studies published? The first nine studies were published in journal of work. The second six studies were published in the journal of vocational rehabilitation. We have many studies in progress right now. These studies in the first two journals are been compiled into a monograph distributed by the sponsor of this program, the VCU rehab and research training centers, 11 of the better studies we've complete ready reprinted in high quality fashion, I might add, in the mono graph and these are available to you VCU RTC. In 2006 we updated the database to be released in 2007. Will be publications about healthcare, cancer, blindness, low vision, autism, chemical sensitivity and other impairment in industry groups. It's being conducted by the DBTAC coordinating center here at VCU in the next five years is in-depth studies of the issues, reasonable accommodation, terms and conditions of employment, hiring and termination. We're going to do a study of gender and of ethnicity. We're going to do regional profiles of all the 10 DBTAC and department of education regions to show what their unique patterns of workplace discrimination are so the DBTACs can approach these in an evidence-based and more aggressive way. We're going to advance our specific findings in greater detail, for example, in most of the impairment studies we've done, we have one study, maybe two studies, in the case of multiple sclerosis because of the support they were able to give us, we've done as many as six very detailed studies. You can see that it isn't as though we're able to do one study about diabetes. We could do three, four, five or six on any impairment condition. Literally hundreds and hundreds of studies to be done. We'll be looking at the impact of more Supreme Court decisions over the next five years. You might want to know why we chose those issues at the top of the page, and those are high previous lens issue where is all the discrimination -- the lion's share of the discrimination activity lies. If we can get an in-depth understanding of the issues which constitute about 3/4 of workplace discrimination, we'll be in a better place to combat it. I'm -- Shirley Chisholm once said in the end, antiblack, antifemale and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing. Antihumanism. Our purpose in this project is to get a better understanding of discrimination of this form of antihumanism against people with disabilities in America so that we are better equipped to minimize it and ultimately, sometime, not likely in my lifetime, by virtually eliminate it from the workplace in the United States and by extension, worldwide. That's our purpose and our message, in these studies which come to you courtesy of national EEOC ADA research project. I appreciate your time and attention today. Thank you for participating. I very much look forward to your questions and comments and to responding and exchanging and dialoguing with you about these things further. Thank you very much. ***