[NFBMO] Please Include the TCIEA in the WIOA Reauthorization

[Gary Wunder]

Here is what I sent. You will find no magic here, only the hope it will
encourage some of us to write to the four folks who may exercise the power
to do away with sub-minimum wages in our nation. Happy Thanksgiving.

Dear Ms. Lincoln:

My first real job outside the family came when I worked for the Kansas City
Association for the blind on what they called a piece rate basis. After
tearing up my Braille-reading hands putting washers on bolts, assembling
China markers, and eventually working on the pin machine, I was bringing
home sixty-four dollars a week. In my time in the sheltered shop, I watched
college graduates who had finished as valedictorians of their high school
classes go into this same shop, and they were making the same thing I was.
So too was the first-class licensed radio engineer, one of the brightest men
I've ever known. They were allowed to be paid below the minimum wage because
they were blind. I have since had a career as a computer programmer for
thirty years and as an editor of a magazine for just over fourteen. In none
of those jobs has anyone attempted to pay me less than the minimum wage, and
we should do away with this practice for blind people by seeing that the
Transformation to Competitive and Integrated Employment is incorporated as
part of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Please do what you can
to make this happen! Thank you.

 

 

Gary Wunder

gwunder at earthlink.net <mailto:gwunder at earthlink.net>  

 

 

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