From the San Francisco Chronicle, CBS:

United Parcel Service tentatively settled a lawsuit Tuesday by agreeing to give employees with hearing loss accommodations for testing and training so that they can compete for jobs driving small delivery vans. The agreement awaits approval by a federal judge.

U.S. Department of Transportation regulations require drivers of trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds to pass hearing tests, but employees sued the company for applying the same standards to its smaller vehicles.

UPS argued that deaf drivers were more likely to get into accidents because they couldn’t hear sirens, screeching tires or other danger signals. Plaintiffs in the nationwide suit said they were unfairly confined to low-level jobs as loaders and sorters despite records that showed they were safe drivers.

“This first-of-its-kind class action on behalf of deaf and hearing-impaired employees broke new ground and made new law,” said Todd Schneider, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 11:51 am and is filed under deaf/hard of hearing, discrimination, law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.