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

[Danielsen, Chris]

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of misplaced compassion and the outdated belief 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

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