Doubly Disabled in Life

[elleng]

Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities historically have been shuttled far from society’s mainstream into segregated lives and workplace serfdom, earning wages as low as pennies per hour for the most repetitive and menial jobs. The Supreme Court in 1999 pronounced this kind of treatment a civil rights violation under the Americans With Disabilities Act, but abuse and isolation from society have continued to this day.

This week, Rhode Island and the Justice Department took an important step away from that pattern by reaching a comprehensive agreement to direct these people toward community living, minimum-wage guarantees and competitive opportunities.

The agreement, a consent decree between state and federal officials announced in Providence, will help some 2,000 developmentally disabled Rhode Islanders obtain community-based jobs over the next decade while 1,250 students with disabilities will receive training for placement in more competitive workplaces. It could serve as a model for the treatment of the nation’s 450,000 developmentally disabled, who are still largely kept in state-run sheltered workshops and segregated day care programs.

According to federal investigators, only 5 percent of the state’s developmentally disabled youngsters are currently guided into integrated job settings after high school. Most of the rest have been shunted into programs — paid for with government money — that offer no opportunities for learning or advancement. Federal investigators examining these programs have also found widespread abuse of a federal law that allows subminimum wages for the severely disabled but not for those capable of doing more. Some of the people in Rhode Island, for example, earned $1.57 an hour for stultifying work like sorting buttons, even though they were found to be suited to more varied and challenging work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/doubly-disabled-in-life.html?_r=0

[Warpy]

1. Minimum wage protection needs to be universal.

If it's a job that generates profit, it should pay its workers fairly.

One thing to remember is that boring and repetitive work to us is a challenge to most mentally challenged workers. The trick is matching the worker to the work.

Paying the worker fairly has to be part of it. Work is work no matter who is doing it.

[area51]

3. +1 n/t

[demigoddess]

2. as a mother of a disabled child

I know that people have such widely varied ideas about handicapped people. Now that we have tons of soldiers who are disabled in many ways, it is time to have done with prejudice and get real about the handicapped and jobs and living arrangements.

[Jefferson23]

4. Recommend.

[DJ13]

5. KNR For views