Monday, February 17, 2014 9:39:21 PM
Intellectually Disabled Struggling To Find Work
Ettore Tommasetti, a young man with Down syndrome, works at the restaurant 'Locanda dei Sunflowers' on January 28, 2014 in Rome. This restaurant is born with the overall objective of promoting the employment of people with Down syndrome, ennobling and giving dignity to the person through an individual path, training and job placement.
(GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans with intellectual or developmental disabilities remain shut out of the workforce, despite changing attitudes and billions spent on government programs to help them. Even when they find work, it's often part time, in a dead-end job or for pay well below the minimum wage.
Employment is seen as crucial for improving the quality of life for people with these disabilities and considered a benchmark for measuring the success of special education programs. Yet the jobs picture is as bleak now it was more than a decade ago.
Only 44 percent of intellectually disabled adults are currently in the labor force, either employed or looking for work, while just 34 percent are actually working, according to a survey by Special Olympics and conducted by Gallup and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. That compares with 83 percent of nondisabled, working-age adults who are in the workforce.
"The needle has not changed in more than four decades," said Gary Siperstein, professor at the University of Massachusetts and one of the authors of the study. "We just can't move the barometer. And we've invested a lot of resources with lots of good programs around the country."
Intellectual disability can include conditions such as autism or Down syndrome. But the vast majority of cases are those with limited intellectual capacity — generally an IQ of about 75 or less — and limitations in handling basic life skills, such as counting money or taking public transportation.
About 28 percent of working-age adults with intellectual disabilities have never held a job. Even those who do manage to find jobs often end up working only part time and get lower pay than workers without disabilities, the study found. On the positive side, 62 percent of disabled people who work in a competitive setting have been there three years or more, showing they can work and stay with it.
"A lot of the problem has to do with low expectations," said Lynnae Ruttledge, a member of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that advises the government on disability policy. "Schoolteachers don't have high expectations, and parents tend to be very protective of their children."
But attitudes are changing, she said. There are now more programs to help disabled children to gain work experience while still in school, making it easier to find a job. Many intellectually disabled people work in fast food, and retail chains such as Walgreens, Best Buy and Safeway that have stepped up to hire them.
Another hurdle is that about 30 percent of intellectually disabled people who work do so in sheltered workshops, where they perform basic tasks but are segregated from nondisabled workers. They can legally be paid less than the minimum wage under a 1938 federal law that allows wages to be based on comparing their productivity level with that of a nondisabled worker.
Disability rights advocates call these workshops an outdated relic and say it's discriminatory to pay them less than other workers. Critics say they don't do enough to build skills or help transition intellectually disabled workers into a mainstream work setting.
Defenders argue that thousands of severely disabled people would be left sitting at home without the carefully structured environments. Of the 420,000 disabled people who work at sheltered workshops, only 5 percent ever leave for other jobs alongside nondisabled workers.
Matthew McMeekin, 35, of Bethesda, Md., has spent 14 years working at Rehabilitation Opportunities Inc., a nonprofit sheltered workshop where he and other disabled workers are bused each workday to stuff envelopes, collate files or shrink-wrap products — all for far less than the state minimum wage of $8.25 an hour.
"He's not working there for the money," says his mother, Bebe McMeekin. "He has a job to go to every day for eight hours a day, five days a week. On Fridays he brings home a paycheck. He has a work environment with his friends that he's gotten to know there."
Asked whether he would ever consider working anywhere else, McMeekin says an emphatic "No!" and rattles off the names of all his work friends. His mother says it would be hard for him to get another job considering his limitations and vision problems.
The National Council on Disability has called on the federal government to phase out sheltered workshops, a move some states are already making. Vermont became the first state to end the use of sheltered workshops and subminimum wage employment in 2003.
"Sheltered workshops at least give them some social context and self-esteem, but it is still segregating, not really mainstreaming them," said Stephen Corbin, senior vice president of community impact at Special Olympics. "We prefer a competitive employment situation."
Disability rights groups won a victory on Wednesday when President Barack Obama signed an executive order raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for federal contract workers. The order includes several thousand disabled workers at sheltered workshops run by federal contractors.
At the other end of the spectrum is Ken Melvin, of Crawfordsville, Ind., a truck driver who is among the few intellectually disabled people living independently and working full time at a regular job. Melvin, 45, earns about $50,000 a year making deliveries and pickups. He's married with four children, has been a member of the National Guard and even served in Afghanistan.
"My biggest disability is reading," Melvin says. "I can read something and not understand it until I've read it 18 or 19 times."
Even simple tasks can be hard, such as putting his shoes on. He was 11 years old before he learned to put his clothes on correctly.
But at school, one of his teachers who had a farm helped him learn to drive a tractor, then a truck. He got his commercial driver's license at 19 and has been driving for a living ever since.
"Anyone looking to hire someone with a disability, they are going to get someone that's more determined and more focused because they've got to be," Melvin said.
© 2014 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/17/intellectually-disabled-w_n_4802446.html [with comments]
--
Wage Against the Machine
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Tuesday January 28, 2014
Samantha Bee explores the devastating economic effects of raising the minimum wage to the poverty level. (04:59)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-28-2014/wage-against-the-machine [with comments]
*
Rich CEO Tells 'Daily Show' The 'Mentally Retarded' Are Maaaybe Worth $2 An Hour
01/29/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/the-daily-show-minimum-wage_n_4688134.html [with the Daily Show segment just above embedded, and comments]
*
Rich CEO Wonders Why 'The Daily Show' Hates The, How You Say, 'Retarded'
Peter Schiff, President and Chief Global Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital, talks about the Chinese economy and foreign trade at the Council on Foreign Relations, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 in New York.
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
by Mark Gongloff
Posted: 01/31/2014 9:59 am EST Updated: 01/31/2014 11:59 am EST
Professional horrible person Peter Schiff is SO DISAPPOINTED with The Daily Show, you guys.
The so-called "comedy program" tricked its audience, using words that Schiff innocently expelled from his face hole, into believing that Schiff thinks the "mentally retarded" deserve to earn $2 an hour, according to a blog post [ http://www.schiffradio.com/b/The-Daily-Show:-The-Daily-Show:-Intellectually-Dishonest-about-the-Intellectually-Disabled/-525361918630098994.html ] by Schiff on Thursday. That is not at all what Schiff meant! What Schiff really meant, he explained, is that... um... the "intellectually disabled," or whatever it's OK to call such people these days without the whole world jumping down your throat about it, should make $2 an hour.
Do you see the difference? Yeah, me neither.
Schiff, former Ron Paul adviser, failed senatorial candidate [ http://www.dailypaul.com/244160/peter-schiff-discusses-failed-senate-bid-if-hell-run-again ] and CEO of the money management [ http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123327685671031439 ] firm Euro Pacific Capital, appeared on The Daily Show [ http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-schiff-barr-ritholtz-daily-show-2014-1 ] earlier this week to explain how the minimum wage is a communist evil that will have us all eating out of dumpsters any day now. When Schiff is not constantly, wrongly [ http://www.etvita.com/2013/04/peter-schiff-is-wrong-about-everything.html ] warning that the U.S. dollar is about to collapse, he is pulling ridiculous stunts to illustrate his hatred for the minimum wage, like harassing shoppers [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/peter-schiff-walmart-stunt_n_4461324.html ] in a Walmart parking lot. His Daily Show appearance was just the latest such stunt.
Beyond the typical, incorrect [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/20/503112/studies-increasing-the-minimum-wage-during-times-of-high-unemployment-doesnt-hurt-job-growth/ ] CEO arguments about how raising the minimum wage will cause soaring inflation and mass layoffs because supply-demand-herpaderp, Schiff added a new wrinkle in his Daily Show chat: Some people are just worth more money than others. "You're worth what you're worth," he told correspondent Samantha Bee. And among the "less-worthy" humans Schiff included the, how do you say, "mentally retarded."
This naturally brought about a Schiffstorm (GET IT????) of criticism and mockery. But Peter Schiff explained himself on Thursday, using more words:
Of the more than four hours of taped discussion I conducted, the producers chose to only use about 75 seconds of my comments. Of those, my use of the words "mentally retarded" (when Samantha Bee asked me who might be willing to work for $2 per hour -- a figure she suggested) has come to define the entire interview.
Man, use an offensive slur one time, and you're just immediately painted forever as somebody who uses offensive slurs to describe other human beings. Tell us more, Peter Schiff:
Although I had no intention of offending anyone, I just couldn’t remember the politically correct term currently in use (it is "intellectually disabled"). Assuming she knew it, Bee could have prompted me with the correct term, but she chose not to.
Just as you suspected: This is all Samantha Bee's fault. WHY DOES SAMANTHA BEE HATE THE DISABLED???
In fact, the entire Daily Show hates the disabled and wants them to never work again, Schiff further explained:
In fact, it's "The Daily Show" that wants to tell the intellectually disabled they are worthless, as they want to make it illegal for them to have jobs.
You see, if America's Job Creators could not pay disabled people insultingly low wages, then they simply would never hire them again, according to Schiff:
I further explained that since such individuals typically live with their parents or other caretakers, they are not working to support themselves or anyone else. They are working for the self-esteem associated with having a job -- the pride of working and making a contribution. Many of the jobs they perform may seem mundane to those of normal intelligence, but they are often the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. I pointed out that if the federal minimum wages were to apply to them, a great many of those opportunities would vanish. Others may disagree, but I believe a job for such a person at $2 per hour is better than no job at all.
And sadly, believe it or freaking not, Schiff's "logic" is actually the law of the land. Since 1938, it has been possible for employers to ask the Labor Department to give them a pass [ http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/sec14.asp ] on paying minimum wages to the disabled.
But here's the thing about jobs: A job is worth what a job is worth, regardless of the person who does it. If you think it's worth $X an hour, then anybody capable of doing such a job -- and plenty of so-called "disabled" people are perfectly capable of handling typically minimum-wage tasks, and a whole lot more -- should get that wage, regardless of their disability.
Because of that terrible 1938 law, and the Peter Schiffs of the world, a lot of people who should be getting paid the minimum wage or more are actually being abused and exploited [ http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20091228/NEWS10/912280319/ ]. For freedom.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/peter-schiff-daily-show_n_4702473.html [with comments]
---
(linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=87526879 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89677320 and preceding and following
Ettore Tommasetti, a young man with Down syndrome, works at the restaurant 'Locanda dei Sunflowers' on January 28, 2014 in Rome. This restaurant is born with the overall objective of promoting the employment of people with Down syndrome, ennobling and giving dignity to the person through an individual path, training and job placement.
(GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans with intellectual or developmental disabilities remain shut out of the workforce, despite changing attitudes and billions spent on government programs to help them. Even when they find work, it's often part time, in a dead-end job or for pay well below the minimum wage.
Employment is seen as crucial for improving the quality of life for people with these disabilities and considered a benchmark for measuring the success of special education programs. Yet the jobs picture is as bleak now it was more than a decade ago.
Only 44 percent of intellectually disabled adults are currently in the labor force, either employed or looking for work, while just 34 percent are actually working, according to a survey by Special Olympics and conducted by Gallup and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. That compares with 83 percent of nondisabled, working-age adults who are in the workforce.
"The needle has not changed in more than four decades," said Gary Siperstein, professor at the University of Massachusetts and one of the authors of the study. "We just can't move the barometer. And we've invested a lot of resources with lots of good programs around the country."
Intellectual disability can include conditions such as autism or Down syndrome. But the vast majority of cases are those with limited intellectual capacity — generally an IQ of about 75 or less — and limitations in handling basic life skills, such as counting money or taking public transportation.
About 28 percent of working-age adults with intellectual disabilities have never held a job. Even those who do manage to find jobs often end up working only part time and get lower pay than workers without disabilities, the study found. On the positive side, 62 percent of disabled people who work in a competitive setting have been there three years or more, showing they can work and stay with it.
"A lot of the problem has to do with low expectations," said Lynnae Ruttledge, a member of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that advises the government on disability policy. "Schoolteachers don't have high expectations, and parents tend to be very protective of their children."
But attitudes are changing, she said. There are now more programs to help disabled children to gain work experience while still in school, making it easier to find a job. Many intellectually disabled people work in fast food, and retail chains such as Walgreens, Best Buy and Safeway that have stepped up to hire them.
Another hurdle is that about 30 percent of intellectually disabled people who work do so in sheltered workshops, where they perform basic tasks but are segregated from nondisabled workers. They can legally be paid less than the minimum wage under a 1938 federal law that allows wages to be based on comparing their productivity level with that of a nondisabled worker.
Disability rights advocates call these workshops an outdated relic and say it's discriminatory to pay them less than other workers. Critics say they don't do enough to build skills or help transition intellectually disabled workers into a mainstream work setting.
Defenders argue that thousands of severely disabled people would be left sitting at home without the carefully structured environments. Of the 420,000 disabled people who work at sheltered workshops, only 5 percent ever leave for other jobs alongside nondisabled workers.
Matthew McMeekin, 35, of Bethesda, Md., has spent 14 years working at Rehabilitation Opportunities Inc., a nonprofit sheltered workshop where he and other disabled workers are bused each workday to stuff envelopes, collate files or shrink-wrap products — all for far less than the state minimum wage of $8.25 an hour.
"He's not working there for the money," says his mother, Bebe McMeekin. "He has a job to go to every day for eight hours a day, five days a week. On Fridays he brings home a paycheck. He has a work environment with his friends that he's gotten to know there."
Asked whether he would ever consider working anywhere else, McMeekin says an emphatic "No!" and rattles off the names of all his work friends. His mother says it would be hard for him to get another job considering his limitations and vision problems.
The National Council on Disability has called on the federal government to phase out sheltered workshops, a move some states are already making. Vermont became the first state to end the use of sheltered workshops and subminimum wage employment in 2003.
"Sheltered workshops at least give them some social context and self-esteem, but it is still segregating, not really mainstreaming them," said Stephen Corbin, senior vice president of community impact at Special Olympics. "We prefer a competitive employment situation."
Disability rights groups won a victory on Wednesday when President Barack Obama signed an executive order raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for federal contract workers. The order includes several thousand disabled workers at sheltered workshops run by federal contractors.
At the other end of the spectrum is Ken Melvin, of Crawfordsville, Ind., a truck driver who is among the few intellectually disabled people living independently and working full time at a regular job. Melvin, 45, earns about $50,000 a year making deliveries and pickups. He's married with four children, has been a member of the National Guard and even served in Afghanistan.
"My biggest disability is reading," Melvin says. "I can read something and not understand it until I've read it 18 or 19 times."
Even simple tasks can be hard, such as putting his shoes on. He was 11 years old before he learned to put his clothes on correctly.
But at school, one of his teachers who had a farm helped him learn to drive a tractor, then a truck. He got his commercial driver's license at 19 and has been driving for a living ever since.
"Anyone looking to hire someone with a disability, they are going to get someone that's more determined and more focused because they've got to be," Melvin said.
© 2014 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/17/intellectually-disabled-w_n_4802446.html [with comments]
--
Wage Against the Machine
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Tuesday January 28, 2014
Samantha Bee explores the devastating economic effects of raising the minimum wage to the poverty level. (04:59)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-28-2014/wage-against-the-machine [with comments]
*
Rich CEO Tells 'Daily Show' The 'Mentally Retarded' Are Maaaybe Worth $2 An Hour
01/29/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/the-daily-show-minimum-wage_n_4688134.html [with the Daily Show segment just above embedded, and comments]
*
Rich CEO Wonders Why 'The Daily Show' Hates The, How You Say, 'Retarded'
Peter Schiff, President and Chief Global Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital, talks about the Chinese economy and foreign trade at the Council on Foreign Relations, Wednesday, March 9, 2011 in New York.
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
by Mark Gongloff
Posted: 01/31/2014 9:59 am EST Updated: 01/31/2014 11:59 am EST
Professional horrible person Peter Schiff is SO DISAPPOINTED with The Daily Show, you guys.
The so-called "comedy program" tricked its audience, using words that Schiff innocently expelled from his face hole, into believing that Schiff thinks the "mentally retarded" deserve to earn $2 an hour, according to a blog post [ http://www.schiffradio.com/b/The-Daily-Show:-The-Daily-Show:-Intellectually-Dishonest-about-the-Intellectually-Disabled/-525361918630098994.html ] by Schiff on Thursday. That is not at all what Schiff meant! What Schiff really meant, he explained, is that... um... the "intellectually disabled," or whatever it's OK to call such people these days without the whole world jumping down your throat about it, should make $2 an hour.
Do you see the difference? Yeah, me neither.
Schiff, former Ron Paul adviser, failed senatorial candidate [ http://www.dailypaul.com/244160/peter-schiff-discusses-failed-senate-bid-if-hell-run-again ] and CEO of the money management [ http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123327685671031439 ] firm Euro Pacific Capital, appeared on The Daily Show [ http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-schiff-barr-ritholtz-daily-show-2014-1 ] earlier this week to explain how the minimum wage is a communist evil that will have us all eating out of dumpsters any day now. When Schiff is not constantly, wrongly [ http://www.etvita.com/2013/04/peter-schiff-is-wrong-about-everything.html ] warning that the U.S. dollar is about to collapse, he is pulling ridiculous stunts to illustrate his hatred for the minimum wage, like harassing shoppers [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/peter-schiff-walmart-stunt_n_4461324.html ] in a Walmart parking lot. His Daily Show appearance was just the latest such stunt.
Beyond the typical, incorrect [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/20/503112/studies-increasing-the-minimum-wage-during-times-of-high-unemployment-doesnt-hurt-job-growth/ ] CEO arguments about how raising the minimum wage will cause soaring inflation and mass layoffs because supply-demand-herpaderp, Schiff added a new wrinkle in his Daily Show chat: Some people are just worth more money than others. "You're worth what you're worth," he told correspondent Samantha Bee. And among the "less-worthy" humans Schiff included the, how do you say, "mentally retarded."
This naturally brought about a Schiffstorm (GET IT????) of criticism and mockery. But Peter Schiff explained himself on Thursday, using more words:
Of the more than four hours of taped discussion I conducted, the producers chose to only use about 75 seconds of my comments. Of those, my use of the words "mentally retarded" (when Samantha Bee asked me who might be willing to work for $2 per hour -- a figure she suggested) has come to define the entire interview.
Man, use an offensive slur one time, and you're just immediately painted forever as somebody who uses offensive slurs to describe other human beings. Tell us more, Peter Schiff:
Although I had no intention of offending anyone, I just couldn’t remember the politically correct term currently in use (it is "intellectually disabled"). Assuming she knew it, Bee could have prompted me with the correct term, but she chose not to.
Just as you suspected: This is all Samantha Bee's fault. WHY DOES SAMANTHA BEE HATE THE DISABLED???
In fact, the entire Daily Show hates the disabled and wants them to never work again, Schiff further explained:
In fact, it's "The Daily Show" that wants to tell the intellectually disabled they are worthless, as they want to make it illegal for them to have jobs.
You see, if America's Job Creators could not pay disabled people insultingly low wages, then they simply would never hire them again, according to Schiff:
I further explained that since such individuals typically live with their parents or other caretakers, they are not working to support themselves or anyone else. They are working for the self-esteem associated with having a job -- the pride of working and making a contribution. Many of the jobs they perform may seem mundane to those of normal intelligence, but they are often the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. I pointed out that if the federal minimum wages were to apply to them, a great many of those opportunities would vanish. Others may disagree, but I believe a job for such a person at $2 per hour is better than no job at all.
And sadly, believe it or freaking not, Schiff's "logic" is actually the law of the land. Since 1938, it has been possible for employers to ask the Labor Department to give them a pass [ http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/sec14.asp ] on paying minimum wages to the disabled.
But here's the thing about jobs: A job is worth what a job is worth, regardless of the person who does it. If you think it's worth $X an hour, then anybody capable of doing such a job -- and plenty of so-called "disabled" people are perfectly capable of handling typically minimum-wage tasks, and a whole lot more -- should get that wage, regardless of their disability.
Because of that terrible 1938 law, and the Peter Schiffs of the world, a lot of people who should be getting paid the minimum wage or more are actually being abused and exploited [ http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20091228/NEWS10/912280319/ ]. For freedom.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/peter-schiff-daily-show_n_4702473.html [with comments]
---
(linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=87526879 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89677320 and preceding and following
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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