My friend the PR guy was invited to the White House Rose Garden Friday to watch President Bush announce the rules that businesses will have to follow under the new Americans with Disabilities Act.
He was proud to be there, but Joseph J. ”Joe” Dragonette is hardly a rose garden kind of guy. He is an irreverent, sometimes profane fellow who played high school football, smokes too much and likes to bet the daily double at Arlington Park.
Joe is excited about the act, the law that, beginning next July, will forbid employers from discriminating against the disabled in any way. But he is also a realist, and he knows it will take more than words on paper to change the way America does business.
”The rules are tougher than business thinks they are,” Joe said. ”In the beginning, there is going to be shock. Then frustration that they don`t know what they have to do. Then anger when some find out how much it`s going to cost.”
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Joe knows a thing or two about shock, frustration and anger. He was shocked 16 years ago when doctors diagnosed his multiple sclerosis. He was frustrated with the leg braces, and later, the wheelchair. He was angry at gawking strangers and angrier still at the pity of those who doubted he could continue as vice president and general manager of one of Chicago`s largest public relations firms.
Seven years ago Joe showed them all. Channeling that anger into action, he left the big PR firm and started a little one of his own called Dragonette Inc. Joe parlayed some old friendships and his considerable knowledge of real estate development into a client list that includes many of the city`s top developers, architects and property managers. Today his firm employs 35, bills more than $2 million a year and ranks in the top 40 nationally.
For almost a decade, Joe and I have met for lunch at least twice a year. Most reporters would rather spend time with a life insurance salesman than some press agents, but with Joe it`s different. He knows the players on my former beat (urban affairs) better than any other publicist in town. He didn`t tell me any of their secrets, but he gave me some insight into what the big shots were doing and why.
We had some ground rules. I didn`t try to pump Joe for information. He didn`t try to pump me for stories on his clients.
We also never talked about his disability. He never brought it up, and I never asked. A secretary would bring him to the restaurant and help him get seated at a table before I got there. With each meeting, the talk got better, and with each meeting, his movements became more difficult because of that damnably progressive disease. After lunch I would stand up, say goodbye and leave. His secretary, never far away, would reappear and help Joe back to his office.
Early last year, Joe broke one of his rules. He started pitching me about the Americans with Disabilities Act. He had volunteered to help the presidential commission that shaped the law, a sweeping piece of legislation that even now scares the daylights out of some business leaders. That is understandable, because the act will change employer-employee relations like no other law since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
When it takes effect next July, the act will prohibit employers from disqualifying a disabled job applicant if he or she could perform ”the essential functions” of the job if the company made ”reasonable
accommodations.” Those accommodations go far beyond wheelchair ramps and wide toilet stalls. They will likely include such things as reading machines for the blind and desk-side oxygen for the short-of-breath. Employers will be excused only if they can show that an accommodation would cause ”undue hardship” to their business.
A potential problem with the act is slippery language such as ”essential functions,” ”reasonable accommodations” and ”undue hardship.” Even the act`s definition of ”disabled” is less than clear, encompassing any
”physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities.”
Dragonette the realist worries that the ambiguities will provoke a glut of hairsplitting lawsuits pitting employers against would-be employees. He knows that kind of confrontation and antagonism could defeat the law`s purpose.
”All we ask is that everyone work together to give the disabled a chance to prove our case,” he testified last year to the House Committee on Small Business. Joe also urged approval of federal tax credits for businesses that will have to make expensive changes to their workplace.
Now Joe is working on another idea. He and some fellow businessmen, in cooperation with the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services, are trying to organize Project Access. It would be a clearinghouse for information and technical assistance that Illinois companies will need to comply with the act.
Rather than fund it with tax dollars, Dragonette`s group hopes to launch Project Access with donations from corporations and charitable foundations. Donors would be given ”charter member” status.
The number to call, at the risk of breaking another one of our ground rules, is 312-565-4300.