[nfbmi-talk] one peckham worker speaks out

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Sheltered Workshops and the Slavery of Disabled Workers
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• Posted by
Alexandria Davis
on February 26, 2012 at 15:00
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I feel strongly about the working conditions of America’s disabled workers, because I am a disabled person myself. I was born totally visually impaired.
My goal is to form the Disabled Workers Committee to ensure minimum wage, safer conditions, health retirement and other benefits, and that disabled workers
are treated as equals just like every other working American. My goal in forming this part of the union movement will be to ensure the voice of all disabled
workers whether they are physically or mentally disabled. I will help organize disabled sheltered workshop workers and other disabled workers into the
UFCW and will then form this committee to ensure all disabled workers have a voice in this union. Yes, some might not agree with unions, but this one has
a unique purpose. There would be advocates for those disabled workers that can not speak on their own to ensure their well-being and fair treatment and
to make sure they have a choice in what they do with their life. My first steps in accomplishing this will be to research the issues facing America’s disabled
workers today. My goal in publishing this essay is to bring public awareness to this issue and get more people to speak out about what is happening to
America's disabled workers.

One of these issues that mean the most to me is minimum wage for disabled workers. Currently there is a law that allows certain employers to pay disabled
workers far below minimum wage and by piece rate. This I believe is extremely wrong especially in the United States. This is total slave labor and exploitation,
and could fall under child labor laws because some of the mentally disabled working in these sheltered workshops are at the mental age of twelve or under.
My first step was to research the issue, and here is what I have so far. My plan after this step is to become a volunteer in the local sheltered workshop
to actually get the view of the workers there and interview them and see what can be done.

We as disabled people should have a choice on how and where we work. We need to use our voices and speak out and speak up for those that are unable. We
as disabled people should be able to work and live in our own communities and not be segregated from everyone else in disabled only places of employment.
Just because we are disabled does not make us less of an American! We deserve fair wages just like every other fellow worker!

Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) allows entities holding what are called “special wage certificates” to pay their disabled workers
less than the federal minimum wage. These entities are almost always segregated workplaces, sometimes called “sheltered workshops,” that employ workers
with various disabilities, including sensory, physical, and cognitive or developmental disabilities. Federal law requires that certain goods and services
procured by the federal government be purchased from these sheltered workshops in order to provide workers with disabilities with employment, but these
workers do not have the same protections that other American workers have. Most importantly they do not receive the federal minimum wage. In recent times
some of these sheltered workshops have begun to pay disabled workers the minimum wage or higher. Because they receive very lucrative federal contracts,
even those workshops that are paying workers competitive wages have no trouble maintaining their operations and even being quite profitable. But some shops
still claim that they would be unable to continue their operations and would have to fire their workers with disabilities if forced to pay the minimum
wage, even though this claim is demonstrably false.

In 1973 Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act, and in 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act became law. Both of these laws are designed to help workers
with disabilities obtain competitive employment outside of these sheltered workshops.

The Current Issue

A bill before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (commonly called the HELP Committee), the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), contains
language in Title V reauthorizing the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. A new section of this title, Section 511, allows rehabilitation agencies, which are supposed
to place workers with disabilities in competitive employment, to place workers in sheltered workshops that pay subminimum wages instead, under certain
circumstances. The Rehabilitation Act has never before endorsed or been linked to the payment of subminimum wages.

http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Fair_Wages_For_Workers_With_Disabilities.asp

Sheltered Workshops and the Subminimum Wage: What Goes Around Comes Around

by James Gashel

Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act allows exemptions from the federal minimum wage in the case of workers whose productivity is impaired by handicap
or age. Any employer otherwise required to pay the minimum wage may obtain authority to pay the lower wage rates permitted by law. However, there is a
fairly extensive amount of paperwork involved to secure approval by the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor.

Now, some sheltered workshops that are organized into an association called the National Association of Rehabilitation Facilities have developed a new idea
from an old idea. They want permission to pay subminimum wages to all handicapped workers without doing the paperwork. That idea is strikingly similar
to the old approach which Congress allowed from 1938 (the beginning of the Fair Labor Standards Act) until 1966 when the subminimum wage provisions of
the Act were last amended.

The old system, prior to the 1966 amendments, amounted to a blanket exemption. Handicapped workers could be paid whatever the workshop managers thought
they should be paid. By 1966, Congress decided that the workers needed some protection against wage exploitation by management. So the 1966 amendments
established several categories of subminimum wage rates. The days of the blanket exemption were over.

Section 14(c) has not been amended since 1966. It requires that each individual handicapped worker be paid on the basis of productivity. The pay rate for
each individual must then be figured as a percentage of the "prevailing wage" for essentially the same type, quantity, and quality of work performed by
non handicapped workers in the general vicinity. Thus, if a handicapped worker's productivity is reported to be 65% of the normal productivity for a no
handicapped worker doing essentially the same kind of work, the handicapped individual's wage can legally be 65% of the prevailing wage for that job. That
sounds good on paper, but it does not work out in practice.

Under the current law, most blind workers are protected to some extent by a requirement that pay rates in a "regular sheltered workshop" cannot be less
than 50% of the federal minimum wage. So right now the minimum wage for the blind and other disabled under that provision is $1.67 per hour. Still, workers
with higher than 50% productivity must be paid more. Anyone whose productivity is reported to be less than 5 0% of the norm may be paid below $1.67 per
hour if the Department of Labor approves an individual exemption. Individual exemptions cannot be less than 25% of the minimum wage.

Then there is the "work activity center." The work activity center actually amounts to another category of exemption from the minimum wage. Individuals
under the work activity center exemption are still supposed to be paid prevailing wages based on productivity. But their productivity must be minimal.
Anyone who can produce even 50% of the norm or thereabouts may not be included in a work activity center. A work activity center must be physically separated
from a regular sheltered workshop. There is no minimum wage requirement for a work activity center.

Separating nonproductive from productive handicapped workers was a major benefit of the 1966 amendments to Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
But the managers of sheltered workshops have never liked that policy. Also, they have never liked the other requirements such as the workshop exemption
of no less than 50% of the minimum wage. Now there is a bill in Congress which the workshops have actually put forward as their proposal. The bill is H.R.
2676, introduced by Representative Thomas Petri of Wisconsin. Mr. Petri's bill would abolish all of the subminimum wage categories but not the subminimum
wage itself. The 50% subminimum wage guarantee in regular workshops would be gone. So would the 25% guaranteed wage under individual exemptions and any
other form of wage protection.

The new system under Mr. Petri's bill would be just about like the old system which existed from 1938 until Congress tightened up the law in 1966. The result
would be that all sheltered workshops would actually amount to work activity centers, where there is no minimum wage requirement whatsoever. In fact, at
a recent hearing on H.R. 2676 a representative of the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor acknowledged that his office would approve
"any wage above zero" if Congress were to pass this bill. The next thing is that the workshops will want us to pay them just for the "privilege" of having
something to do, kind of a minimum wage in reverse, so to speak.

http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/bm/bm86/bm8603/bm860311.htm

The report from the National Disability Rights Network paints a glum picture of the jobs held by many Americans with disabilities that pay less than the
federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. In it, the authors charge that the segregated environments people with disabilities often work in are akin to institutions
by “warehousing” people, limiting their opportunities and putting them in danger of abuse and neglect, all while providing financial gain for employers,
some of whom earn six-figure salaries.

“For decades we have worked to ensure federal laws guarantee the right of people with disabilities to live and work in their chosen communities,” said Curt
Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network, an umbrella group for the protection and advocacy organizations in each state, which
produced the report. “Yet, our investigation found that many people with disabilities are still being segregated and financially exploited.”

Under current law, the Department of Labor authorizes select employers to pay less than the minimum wage to workers with disabilities if the employee is
determined to be less productive as a result of their disability. In such cases, individuals are paid a percentage of the hourly wage a typical employee
would earn for performing the job.

However, government oversight of employers to ensure that workers are paid appropriately is limited, the report found, leaving the door open for abuse given
that many workers are not able to speak up for themselves.

What’s more, while sheltered workshops are typically billed as providing job training, the report authors argue there’s little opportunity for people to
transfer into competitive employment since the skills they’re taught frequently have little application elsewhere. And the low pay workers receive — often
just 50 percent of the minimum wage — keeps people in a cycle of poverty.

“Sheltered workshops are often celebrated for providing an altruistic service to their communities,” the report says. “In reality they provide workers with
disabilities with dead-end jobs, meager wages and the glimpse of a future containing little else.”

Sheltered Workshops No Better Than Institutions, Report Finds

By Michelle Diament

http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2011/01/19/sheltered-workshops-repor...

Segregated and Exploited:

http://www.disabilitylawcenter.org/Segregated-and-Exploited%20v18.pdf

Many are asking, “What will happen to those with disabilities who are currently employed under these special subminimum wage certificates?” The real question
to be answered is, “What should happen to those people with disabilities currently being exploited under this unjust provision?”

The fundamental fallacy is in considering subminimum-wage work as true employment. The entities that engage in this practice are not employers. They are
daycare providers for people with disabilities, offering days filled only with repetitive drudgery for sometimes third-world wages and leading nowhere
for their workers but toward despair and greater dependence on social programs and public assistance. Imprisoning these workers in this adult daycare environment
keeps them from acquiring the necessary training and opportunity to identify the skills or job that could lead to their competitive, integrated employment
at the federal minimum wage or higher. If social supports are necessary for some of these people to sustain themselves, then society should be developing
methods that will make it possible for them to gain real skills, to identify appropriate jobs, and to contribute in a meaningful way to the system that
supports them.

Many of these sheltered workshops could be more accurately described as prisons, albeit without bars, than as actual workplaces. The data show that fewer
than 5 percent of the prisoners escape. This means that 95 percent of the people currently toiling in subminimum-wage work will spend their entire working
lives in these facilities. They will never receive the needed services, training, or support to become real workers, doing real jobs, and earning real
wages.

We must eliminate this legalized wage discrimination in order to shift the paradigm from one maintaining that people with disabilities cannot perform jobs
competitively to one that recognizes that, with the proper training, opportunity, and supports, even people with the most significant disabilities can
be competitively employed—contributing to an employer's bottom line and adding value to the American economy.

"Rather than adopting a new business model that values each employee by paying at least the federal minimum wage, other employers prefer to continue exploiting
the productivity of workers with disabilities. In addition to artificially padding profits by exploiting subminimum-wage labor, these entities generate
further revenue through soliciting philanthropic donations and obtaining federal funding. It should be obvious that any business unable to remain lucrative
with public and private money constantly flowing into its coffers while paying the employees at least the federal minimum wage should not be in business
at all. The failure of such an entity is likely to be the result of poor management, not the payment of competitive wages or the incapacity of its workers
with disabilities. Such shoddy operations should not be subsidized by a federal law that allows them to exploit workers with disabilities by using them
as a fundraising resource, as a justification for the lavishing of federal largesse, and as sweatshop laborers."

"just like every other American citizen. Rather than allowing the labor of people with disabilities to be devalued, America needs to incentivize the development
of the progressive employment tools, strategies, and supports that make it possible for every American citizen, regardless of disability, to earn a fair
wage. Congress must pass the Fair Wages for People with Disabilities Act."

http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/bm/bm11/bm1110/bm111003.htm

NDRN Report Shines Light on Exploitation of Disabled

By Janine Bertram Kemp

The National Disability Rights Network released a groundbreaking report in January that has evoked a volatile reaction in many quarters. The report, "Segregated
and Exploited: The Failure of the Disability Service System to Provide Quality Work," is NDRN’s call to action.

The report documents abuses at Henry’s Turkey Farm in Atalissa, Iowa, in 2009 and 2010. Sixty men with disabilities, who worked alongside non-disabled workers,
lived together in a roach-infested, abandoned school-turned-bunkhouse. Henry’s paid $600 per month for use of the tax-free bunkhouse and deducted $10,000
a week from the disabled men’s checks, according to a story in the Des Moines Register.

Each of the disabled workers averaged a net pay of 41 cents per hour, while co-workers without disabilities averaged $9 to $12 per hour. Because Henry’s
Turkey Farm was also landlord and “caretaker” for the workers with disabilities, the farm received the men's Social Security checks and took deductions
for such things as housing and transportation. As a result, the disabled workers took home about $65 per month.

According to the NDRN, exploitation and abuse of people with disabilities continues in the segregated settings of sheltered workshops and “training centers”
throughout the nation.

http://www.itodaynews.com/february2011/IT_News_27_JBK_Workshop.htm

Here is a piece from the prospective of a disabled worker at one of the several sheltered workshops here in the States:

If you think slavery in the United States has come to an end, think again.

Slavery is defined as a system in which people are the property of others. Consider this: If each person with a disability was a beautiful acre of land,
then it is accurate to say that many of these “acres” are taken over because of “manifest destiny.”

Manifest destiny was a term used in the 1840s to justify this country’s taking of land -- such as Oregon, California and Texas -- because, it was said,
the white man’s right to the property was inspired by God and democracy and good will. It was claimed that, somehow, the white man held a higher station
in life than Native Americans, a notion that is best described, as TV’s Archie Bunker said, as “crapola.” Once taken over, a person with a disability becomes
disenfranchised, a word that means “being denied the right of citizenship.” That is slavery.

Manifest destiny, then and now, is nothing more than an excuse to step over and on anyone and anything that stands in the way of greed and lust for power.
It is inflicted on many of us who live with disabilities. Our lives and our rights are taken over and controlled by others, usually to benefit big business.
We are dictated to and controlled and restricted in a wide variety of ways. That is slavery.

We are told where to live, what to eat (there is not a plethora of menu choices in community-based programs or institutions), what transportation we can
use, where we can work, for whom we can work, where we can vote and so forth. That is slavery.

Many of us are sent to sheltered workshops and paid slave-labor wages. The companies running sheltered workshops are not obligated to pay minimum wage.
That is slavery.

I read one definition of a sheltered workshop that said, “The word ‘sheltered’ refers to a protective environment where the disabled can undertake paid
meaningful employment in a supportive environment.” Again, that is crapola. In the real world, these sugar-coated words (sugar has been called cancer’s
Cadillac, so sugar isn’t such a good thing in the first place) actually mean “we’re going to send you to do some mind-bendingly boring work, pay you pennies
and make money off you and -- oh, yeah -- this has meaning to you.” That is slavery.

http://www.itodaynews.com/october2010/25_slaves-kahrmann.htm

I believe after researching this issue that these places need to be either closed down for good or these disabled people who work at such places should
have a voice. They need to have a union that will ensure fair treatment, and right now this is an example of extremely unfair labor practices. This is
going on all around the country in every state and city. There needs to be a change, and the change needs to start now. Disabled people deserve minimum
wage just like every other American.

Disabled people, you have a voice, use it! Are you scared? Well come on! Don't let them make you afraid. You know what's right; you and only you know what's
best for you and your life. You have to come to understand that or people will walk all over you like they walk on sidewalks. If something's not right
about your life, it’s you who can change it. Don't let people intimidate you and make you feel little. Think of yourself as just a pile of sticks, never
let them break you!