[Nfbv-fairfax] Fwd: [Nfbnet-members-list] FW: The Hill - Congress Blog - Don’t sabotage the Rehabilitation Act

[Wanda Taylor]

Hello everyone! You should have received the following message, but just in
case I am forwarding it to you again.

Wanda

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Danielsen, Chris <CDanielsen at nfb.org>
Date: Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 9:28 PM
Subject: [Nfbnet-members-list] FW: The Hill - Congress Blog - Don’t
sabotage the Rehabilitation Act
To: nfbnet-members-list at nfbnet.org


This op-ed, by our own First Vice President Dr. Fred Schroeder, was
published in the online edition of The Hill this morning.

Chris


Christopher S. Danielsen, J.D.
Director of Public Relations
National Federation of the Blind

-----Original Message-----
From: Pare, John
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 10:24 AM
To: Lewis, Anil; Danielsen, Chris; Schroeder, Fred
Subject: The Hill - Congress Blog - Don’t sabotage the Rehabilitation Act

The Hill - Congress Blog
July 30, 2013, 10:00 am

Don’t sabotage the Rehabilitation Act

 By Dr. Fredric K. Schroeder - 07/30/13 10:00 AM ET

For most of human history, society has believed that people with
disabilities are incapable of productive work. This was the belief in 1938,
when Congress exempted employers of workers with disabilities from paying
their workers the federal minimum wage. Since then, attitudes about workers
with disabilities have slowly changed, and our nation’s laws and policies
have changed with them. Recognizing that Americans with disabilities could
work and make a living, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act in 1973.
This historic law recognized that people with disabilities should not be
discriminated against in employment and strengthened a system, funded by
the federal government and administered through state agencies, that
prepares Americans with disabilities for competitive employment in the
mainstream workforce.

Despite this important policy shift, however, the provision of federal law
allowing certain employers to pay workers with disabilities less than the
federal minimum wage remains in place. Although many Americans with
disabilities receive the training and opportunity they need to find jobs
that are both personally and financially rewarding, some 400,000 workers
with disabilities remain trapped in segregated, subminimum wage employment
in what is called the “sheltered workshop” system. Many of these workers
have intellectual disabilities and are placed in sheltered workshops by
their legal guardians out of misplaced compassion and the outdated belief
that disabled people can’t really work. This is no longer justifiable for
any reason, if it ever was; it is discriminatory and immoral. The National
Federation of the Blind, on whose board I serve, and fifty other
organizations of people with disabilities support legislation that would
repeal the obscure provision of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that
keeps this unconscionable practice alive.

Until now, people with disabilities and their advocates have managed to
keep the rehabilitation system legally walled off from the separate and
unequal subminimum wage employment system. When I served as commissioner of
the Rehabilitation Services Administration during the Clinton
administration, we issued regulations ending the practice of rehabilitation
agencies placing individuals with disabilities in segregated, subminimum
wage jobs and counting them as successful employment outcomes. Imagine my
dismay when the latest reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act,
which contains the reauthorization of the Rehabilitation Act, was
introduced and referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor
and Pensions (the HELP Committee) with language—in a new Section 511—that
would allow rehabilitation agencies to place workers in subminimum wage
employment.

The effort to pass this legislation is being led by HELP Committee Chairman
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and ranking member Sen Lamar Alexander
(R-Tenn.), who claim that they have introduced this new provision to
curtail the placement of young people in subminimum wage jobs. Harkin has
good reason to want to stop this practice—one of the most shocking and
shameful instances of subminimum wage employment was exposed in his state a
couple of years ago. A turkey processing operation was paying men with
intellectual disabilities forty-one cents an hour and housing them in an
unheated, roach-infested “bunkhouse.” I do not doubt Harkin’s sincerity,
but I do question his method of trying to stop it from happening again.

Section 511 purports to permit placement in subminimum wage work only as
part of training for later competitive employment, with a review of the
worker’s status required every six months. But this approach would merely
write subminimum wages into the Rehabilitation Act—where there has never
before been any language authorizing subminimum wages. Sheltered workshops
often claim that they are training their workers, but we know from sad
experience and extensive study that 95 percent of the workers who enter
sheltered workshops never leave them. Section 511 does nothing but require
a rehabilitation counselor to certify that a worker is in “training” every
six months. This proposal will simply make the rehabilitation system
complicit in the exploitation of disabled workers from the time they are
old enough to leave school—or possibly earlier—until they die.

The way to end discrimination against and exploitation of workers with
disabilities is to stop allowing the payment of subminimum wages. A bill
being considered in the House of Representatives, the Fair Wages for
Workers with Disabilities Act, would do this responsibly. Sabotaging the
Rehabilitation Act by placing language in it that allows rehabilitation
agencies to place workers in sheltered workshops, even with purported
restrictions, won’t work, and in fact will make the situation worse. When
the HELP Committee considers this legislation on Wednesday, Section 511
should be stripped from the bill.

Schroeder served as commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services
Administration under President Bill Clinton from 1994 until 2001. He is
currently first vice president of the National Federation of the Blind and
a research professor for the San Diego State University Research Foundation.

Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/**congress-blog/healthcare/**
314127-dont-sabotage-the-**rehabilitation-act<http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/314127-dont-sabotage-the-rehabilitation-act>

John G. Paré, Jr.
Executive Director for Advocacy and Policy NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
200 East Wells Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21230
Telephone: (410) 659-9314, ext. 2218
Cell phone: (410) 917-1965
Fax: (410) 685-5653
Email: jpare at nfb.org

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