Sheltered workshops face challenges beyond pay

By Jonathan Ice

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Nov. 10 was the third day in a row that The Gazette published articles critical of Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns' proposed legislation that would outlaw sub-minimum wages for disabled workers at sheltered workshops. While all the articles mentioned abuses of existing laws by places like Henry's Turkey Services, they argued that the great majority of sub-minimum wage workers gain dignity, pride and a few dollars from their efforts, and thus such arrangements should be preserved.

What has been overlooked has been powerful, but subtle, disincentives in current regulations that perpetuate a system that was meant to be transitional.

When sheltered shops first were conceived, they were meant to be transitional employment, affording people with disabilities the chance to get job experience that would then lead to mainstream employment, at competitive wages. Soon the shops came to realize that they risked putting themselves out of business if all their best workers moved to the mainstream.

To retain their best workers, some employers started paying them a competitive wage, sometimes well above the minimum. Others were less ethical. Since most pay was by piece rate, time tests could be set up so that workers would be at less than maximum efficiency and wages kept low. Sometimes test results simply were fudged.

I am most familiar with the system that used to prevail for blind workers. It was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of anything but sheltered work, so even highly intelligent people would be channeled into the shops, though their talents were not suited to physical labor.

The former director of the training center where I got my blindness training, in her younger years, was told that the only employment she ever would get would be in a sheltered shop, despite her college degree in English teaching. It is fortunate that rebels like Joyce Scanlan chose to buck that system and strive for employment more appropriate to their talents.

I don't know that I am as sanguine as some of my colleagues in the National Federation of the Blind that there is no place in America for sub-minimum wage sheltered employment, but sheltered workshops should not be given the latitude of operation that they have been given in the past.

In my opinion, one of the most positive changes in policy regarding sheltered work was the directive from the Rehabilitation Services Administration around 1998 that no longer allowed vocational rehabilitation agencies to claim placement in sheltered work as true job placement. Undoubtedly, this caused hardship for the shops, but I suspect it forced them to get closer to their roots in transitional employment.

There is honor and dignity in honest labor, especially if pay is commensurate with effort. Our societal obsession that defines our lives by our work may make many people with disabilities prefer work at a sub-minimum wage to no job at all.

My longtime friend Donald has severe athetoid cerebral palsy, which renders him incapable of all but the simplest and slowest of physical labor. While his intellectual abilities seem normal, it is so hard to understand his speech that efficient communication is not possible.

He works in a sheltered shop and earns a pittance, but derives pride and social opportunities from this.

This is not to be discounted, but I cannot condone the changes in the Workforce Investment Act that Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa is proposing that might actually expand opportunities for companies to hire at sub-minimum wage. That is a step in the wrong direction, and that is, at least in part, why Stearns authored his bill in Congress.

Jonathan Ice of Cedar Rapids is a rehabilitation teacher with the Iowa Department for the Blind. Comments: jkice89@q.com