Delaware Association of the Deaf (DAD)

Sept 22 (Reuters) – The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Friday said it sued United Parcel Service (UPS.N) for disability discrimination, alleging the delivery firm refused to hire deaf or hearing-impaired individuals as drivers.

The agency said the Department of Transportation (DOT) has authorized the practice of employing those individuals to drive vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds through a program that exempts them from a hearing test and instead uses alternative criteria to ensure an equivalent level of driver safety.

Atlanta-based UPS said it is modifying driver training for those who are deaf and hard of hearing and would start accepting exemptions to the DOT commercial driver hearing standard for operators of its ubiquitous brown delivery trucks in January 2024.

UPS said training is necessary because “current regulations do not consider best practices for driving larger commercial vehicles that make frequent stops in residential neighborhoods, or other significant factors UPS considers as it works to help keep its drivers and communities safe.”

Read on at https://www.reuters.com/legal/eeoc-sues-ups-disability-discrimination-hiring-2023-09-22/?fbclid=IwAR3zFbHruzOHBjJAPA09NDHsM1nGtQJQ9MN1VWK_b2dlpVtWdldjMasm3kM

Tesla’s factory in Grünheide, Germany officially opened last year, and the site has since accumulated around 11,000 workers. According to a new post from Tesla’s Recruiting account on X, the automaker has also hired as many as 60 deaf people to work at the Gigafactory outside of Berlin.

The Brandenburg Gigafactory has so far hired 60 deaf employees, many of whom are Ukrainians who fled the ongoing Russian invasion, according to the new Tesla Recruiting account on X in a post on Sunday. The post includes a video introducing viewers to a few of the factory’s deaf employees, including Amaliia, Ihor and Andrii.

The video also includes excerpts from some of the non-deaf employees about their experiences having deaf coworkers on the team.

“We don’t just talk about inclusion and diversity, we simply live it,” says general assembly supervisor Holger in the video. “For me there are no employees with disabilities, they are simply employees.”

Read on at https://www.teslarati.com/teslas-gigafactory-berlin-has-hired-60-deaf-employees/?fbclid=IwAR1hTVWgp6gFIr3RrSSV1VU4lJSIbxu9Hx5wixCs9BQg-pc9H6E1JCeZ24o