Written Testimony of the National Disability Rights Network for the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Full Committee Hearing

Improving Employment Opportunities for People with Intellectual Disabilities

March 2, 2011

We would like to thank Senator Harkin for holding this important and timely hearing today.  

The National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) is a nonprofit membership organization for the federally mandated Client Assistance Program (CAP) and Protection and Advocacy (P&A) systems, created by Congress in the 1970’s to protect the rights of children and adults with disabilities and their families.  With a presence in every state and U.S. territory, and the District of Columbia, the CAP and P&A systems offer an advocacy and legal voice to people with disabilities, and aims to uncover and eliminate maltreatment and ensure compliance with laws designed to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities.  The P&A and CAP systems include employment issues in their work, attempting to address the many issues that keep people with disabilities from achieving their goal of competitive employment.

The unemployment rate for people with disabilities as of February 1st was 13.6%, much higher than the 9.7% unemployment rate for people without disabilities.  Additionally only 20.1% of individuals with a disability are even in the workforce and those that are face the prospect of employment in a segregated setting, or being paid less (and sometimes mere pennies on the dollar) than the minimum wage.

In January, NDRN issued a Call to Action entitled, “Segregated and Exploited: The Failure of the Disability Service System to Provide Quality Work."

This Call to Action lays out the unfortunate reality that today, across the country, hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities are being isolated and financially exploited by their employers.  Most are paid only a fraction of the minimum wage while many company owners make six-figure salaries.  For many people with disabilities, their dream of leaving their “job training program” will never come true.  These people labor away making only a tiny portion of what they should because there is a system in place that provides no true alternatives.

As you will see and hear today, the truth is that people with disabilities can—and do—work in all areas of the American workforce.  They thrive when they fully participate in their communities, and in turn, the nation thrives.  Unfortunately, sheltered workshops and the sub-minimum wage still exist today because of self-interested employers and systematic neglect by federal agencies, buttressed by outdated stereotypes of people with disabilities and the low expectations held by the general public, lawmakers, and, sadly, even some families and the disability rights community.

For these reasons, this hearing is extremely timely.  However, ultimately this Congress and this committee need to take some concrete steps to increase the employment options of people with disabilities.  NDRN calls upon this committee and the Congress to:

• Restrict all federal and state money that is spent on employers who segregate employees with disabilities from the general workforce.
• End the ability of employers to pay employees with disabilities a sub-minimum wage.
• End all programs that emphasize moving young adults from the classroom to a segregated or sub-minimum wage employment environment.
• Strengthen existing and create new federal incentives for employers to place employees with disabilities in integrated environments at comparable wages.
• Require early attachment to the workforce through things like summer youth employment, or community involvement through volunteerism.
• Assist employees with disabilities to find employment in the general workforce in jobs that they choose.
• Increase penalties for violators of the subminimum wage.
• Require formalized standards for employee evaluations and productivity measurements.

Specifically for people with intellectual disabilities, the Congress and this Committee should:

• Require that people with intellectual disabilities be considered, “most significantly disabled” under the Rehabilitation Act which would mean they would get services as required under that Act.  This would change the current practice of Vocational Rehabilitation agencies choosing those with less involved disabilities in order to achieve case closures and meet goals.
• Require Vocational Rehabilitation agencies to do person centered planning, circles of support, or use some other individualized discovery process for people with intellectual disabilities.  We have seen many examples of Vocational Rehabilitation agencies using inappropriate assessments which show people with intellectual disabilities to be less capable and therefore less likely to get services.
• Make sure that integrated employment is the standard, not an afterthought.  Congress needs to create uniform standards and long-term funding to ensure that the supported employment method of ensuring competitive employment for people with a disability, including those with an intellectual disability, is fully used.  Many states have set arbitrary and capricious standards for supported employment or deny supported employment because it requires the identification of a long-term funding source, which many states will say they lack.

Congress should take this opportunity to ensure that people with disabilities have a chance to be competitively employed.  Simply put, sheltered workshops are just another institution segregating people with disabilities away, while the subminimum wage ensures these individuals a life of poverty.

This hearing is extremely timely, and NDRN looks forward to working with you Senator Harkin, and the entire HELP Committee, to achieve a world where people with disabilities have their choice of employment in integrated and competitively paid environments rather than segregated and subminimum wage positions.