At 20 percent of the population, people with disabilities are America’s largest minority group.

“They carry a second distinction of being America’s most invisible population,” says Wayne McMillan, president and CEO of Bobby Dodd Institute (BDI), an Atlanta-based nonprofit providing career services and job training for the disabled. “Instead of an uproar,” he says, “their chronic underemployment is a largely unspoken issue.”

BDI’s recent national survey, Disability in Our Daily Lives, gauged the perception of people with disabilities in the American workplace. The results show that 86 percent of survey respondents felt people with disabilities face hiring limitations. Among numerous barriers facing this population, respondents cited cost of accommodating (54 percent), lack of knowledge about accommodations (53 percent), and insufficient knowledge of people with disabilities (49 percent) among reasons why employers are reluctant to hire from the disability talent pool.

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Just having a diversity program won’t instantly solve all your problems.

“Diversity is not simply a means to an end, but rather, an ongoing journey that evolves over time,” says Jennifer Melton, an EEO/diversity management consultant for F&H Solutions Group, an affiliate of Ford & Harrison LLP. “The idea that the implementation of these initiatives will automatically facilitate change or dispel any notion of discrimination is an unrealistic proposition.”

But with a lot of time and tenacity, she says, greater diversity in thought, experience, and communication can gradually emerge from within an organization.

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Several food-processing plants across the country have been in the news as they grapple with the requests of increasing numbers of Muslim workers seeking religious accommodations. Three disputes — all at meatpacking plants — centered on prayer breaks, especially important at Ramadan. During that month (which varies from year to year because it’s set on a lunar calendar), Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset and can eat only after a sunset prayer. At a Tennessee plant, an employer faced a backlash from employees when the union contract swapped out Labor Day for an end-of-Ramadan holiday, Eid al-Fitr. Employees have sought exceptions to rules on uniforms, saying it’s against their religion to wear slacks, and asked to be excused from handling pork on religious grounds.

How are these companies dealing with employees’ religious needs, and what can all employers learn from their experience? We’ll look at two recent situations and examine the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) revision of its compliance manual on religious discrimination, prompted by the growing religious diversity of the American workplace and a rise in religious discrimination claims.

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An interstate trucking firm has agreed to pay $2.4 million and provide other remedial relief to a class of women to settle a major sex discrimination lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). According to the EEOC, beginning in 1997, PittOhio Express, Inc., denied a class of qualified female applicants employment as truck drivers or dockworkers. Instead, men filled the positions during the period in question.

In addition to the significant monetary settlement, the trucking firm has agreed to (1) make offers of employment to women who previously should have been hired as drivers and dockworkers, (2) provide equal opportunity training to all supervisors and managers, and (3) monitor and report on the status and outcome of its training efforts.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently issued a report on women’s earnings in 2007. According to the report, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median weekly earnings of $614, or about 80 percent of the $766 median for their male counterparts. That ratio has grown since 1979 (the first year for which comparable earnings data are available), when women earned about 62 percent as much as men.

Other highlights from the report include the following: read more…