UPS to pay $10 million to settle lawsuit by deaf workers

OAKLAND, Calif. -- United Parcel Service Inc. will pay $10 million and ensure deaf employees and applicants full access to workplace safety information and promotion opportunities under a proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit.

The Monday agreement -- which includes $4.1 million for plaintiffs' attorneys -- ends a trial of a class-action lawsuit claiming UPS, the nation's fourth-largest private employer, discriminated against more than 900 current and former hearing-impaired employees.

"I'm hopeful that deaf employees will not be held back anymore," Babaranti Oloyede, one of the plaintiffs, said through an interpreter.

In a trial that began in April, hearing-impaired plaintiffs testified that they were routinely excluded from workplace information, denied opportunities for promotion and exposed to unsafe conditions due to lack of accommodation by the delivery company.

"I've been working there for 12 years now and for all those years UPS didn't provide interpreters, a telephone for emergency news, closed captioning, training videotapes or emergency signals like flashing lights," said Oloyede, 45, who works in UPS' Oakland office.

"We had many meetings, like a meeting about anthrax, and I didn't have an interpreter, so I didn't know what was going on."

Company officials denied discriminating against hearing-impaired employees and on Monday said UPS has tried to accommodate deaf and hard-of-hearing employees.

"UPS has long been a positive work environment for those with disabilities and we're proud of our record thus far," said Peggy Gardner, spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based company. "We feel the measures called for in the settlement are only going to make a positive work environment even better."

Plaintiffs' lawyers disagreed, saying UPS was forced to settle by its cavalier attitude toward the disabled workers.

"Their defense was basically that deaf people should be happy to have a job," attorney Todd Schneider said. "I was shocked, the court was shocked, and that's why we settled."

Under the proposed settlement, UPS would set aside $100,000 to track promotions and ensure that deaf employees and job applicants have access to certified interpreters. The company would also provide text telephones and vibrating pagers to alert deaf employees to emergency evacuations.

The settlement resolves all issues in the case except for UPS' policy precluding deaf people from any driving positions. Other companies, such as the U.S. Postal Service, permit deaf employees who have demonstrated safe driving skills to drive delivery vehicles under 10,000 pounds. That issue will be resolved in court.

The proposed settlement requires court approval after notice is distributed throughout the country and a fairness hearing is held. The parties hope for final approval by the end of the year.