Article from the Chronicle Herald
According to Statistics Canada, 54 per cent are unemployed or not in the work force, but some believe the number is actually around 70 per cent after factoring in people who have given up looking. (The unemployment rate for the general population was 7.3 per cent on May 11.)
I got a torrent of letters from the disabled and their families cataloguing their often heartbreaking unemployment stories. Then, an email arrived from Toronto businessman Mark Wafer.
“I am deaf, I have about 20 per cent hearing and have since birth. I could not keep a job as a young man but became a successful business owner. I began hiring people with disabilities in my first Tim Hortons in 1995,” he wrote.
To date he has hired 82 people with disabilities, including 33 currently in his workforce of 210, spread over six locations.
“Why did I do this?” Wafer continued. “Simply because I saw a business benefit as time went on. Of course, it was the right thing to do, but that isn’t reason enough for business owners to hire PWDs (people with disabilities.)”
So thank you, Mark Wafer, for reminding me that hiring the disabled is just good business.
Here are six reasons why: http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/105717-six-reasons-why-hiring-disabled-good-for-business
