COFAR blog

We are hoping we can help the members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation understand the severity of the problem caused by the lack of meaningful employment opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) in this state.

On June 27, we held a Zoom meeting with an aide to Senator Elizabeth Warren to discuss that problem and the decline of the state’s two remaining Intermediate Care Facilities (ICFs) as options for residential services. That latter issue will be a subject for another blog post.

Among those attending was Jim Durkin, legislative director for AFSCME Council 93 in Boston. Also attending was Patty Garrity, whose brother Mark, is one of potentially thousands of clients of the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) who are facing a lack of meaningful work activities in their day programs.

Unfortunately, when it comes to providing employment for people with I/DD, most members of Congress appear to be heading in the wrong direction. For years, members of the state delegation have supported legislation that we think would effectively discourage such opportunities.

While Senator Warren, in particular, has been a strong voice for workers, she has also unfortunately been out front in mistakenly opposing the payment of subminimum wages to people with disabilities in congregate and other work settings.

We strongly support the payment of at least a $15-per-hour minimum wage to all persons, including disabled persons, who want to be paid that amount or more. We have, in fact, called for a minimum $25-an-hour wage for direct-care workers in the DDS system.

But what even many advocates for the disabled don’t realize is that there are some people with I/DD who don’t seek or choose payment of a minimum wage even though they do want to work. Those people cannot perform the level of work necessary in most mainstream job settings to receive a minimum wage; and therefore, they face the prospect of having no work at all if employers are not allowed to pay them a subminimum wage.

As Patty Garrity told Senator Warren’s aide in our Zoom meeting, the lack of viable work opportunities for Mark began after his then sheltered workshop was closed along with the rest of the remaining workshops in Massachusetts in 2016. Mark was one of thousands of people whose workshops became day programs, which no longer provided them with the piecework that they used to do.

Patty maintained that Mark had taken pride in that previous work. The fact that he wasn’t paid at the minimum wage rate was immaterial to him because he doesn’t understand the value of money.

“My brother lost out with the closure of his sheltered workshop, and he is continuing to lose out,” Patty said. “He’s not a minimum wage candidate. There is now a big gap in Mark’s life.”

Staffing shortage in day programs making the problem worse

That gap for Mark is only likely to get worse because of the ongoing staffing shortage in day and other programs funded by DDS. Many of these programs offer few activities of any kind.

Even the Arc of Massachusetts, a key proponent of the closures of the sheltered workshops, now acknowledges that the staffing shortage is a cause of a “systemic failure” in the DDS system in providing services. Maura Sullivan, a senior Mass Arc official, was quoted in April as saying:

There are thousands of adults with developmental disabilities that are not being served or we consider them underserved — very, very few services…

I think of it as really a systemic failure. And we’re really waking up to the fact that, you know, human services is a workforce that has been neglected in terms of rate increases.

As Sullivan acknowledged, the underpayment of staff is a key cause of the staffing shortage. It is not DDS clients who choose subminimum wages who are underpaid; rather it is their caregivers who should be paid more.

Two bills in Congress would promote work opportunities

We are urging members of the Massachusetts delegation to sign onto two bills, which would promote work opportunities for persons with I/DD. So far, no member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation has signed onto either bill.

Subminimum wage bill

The first bill (H.R.1296) would give an individual a choice whether to accept employment at a subminimum wage.

As Patty Garrity noted, her brother Mark cannot perform at the level most employers are looking for in providing a minimum wage. Patty maintains that it is also not Mark’s choice to work in an integrated environment.

We think an intellectually disabled client’s choice is key in this matter as it is in virtually all aspects of their care. In fact, DDS regulations state that programs and services are intended “to promote self determination and freedom of choice to the individual’s fullest capability…” (115 CMR 5.03) (my emphasis).

In seeking to eliminate subminimum wages, lawmakers would take away a choice for clients such as Mark in addition to taking away employment opportunities for them. Those lawmakers are effectively arguing that it is better for those clients to have nothing to do than to take a job that pays less than the minimum wage. Yet doing nothing all day long is clearly not Mark’s preference or choice.

Integrated employment bill

The second bill we are supporting (H.R. 553) states that a location in which an individual is able to interact with “colleagues, vendors, customers, and superiors…” would be considered to be a “competitive, integrated employment” setting.

This legislative proposal runs counter to a long-held but misinformed ideology that all persons with I/DD can successfully participate in employment activities alongside persons without cognitive disabilities. That ideology has also been a basis for the closures of sheltered workshops in Massachusetts and other states.

According to the ideology, the workshops were segregated settings because most or all of the participants generally had I/DD. That label, however, makes little sense in our view because most clients in sheltered workshops were there by choice.

Current federal law, which H.553 would change, states that an integrated employment location must be one in which the disabled employee “interacts with other persons who are not individuals with disabilities (not including supervisory personnel or individuals who are providing services to such employee)…” (my emphasis).

H.R. 553 would allow interactions with those supervisory personnel and service providers to count as integrated interactions.

The current federal law prevents work activities from being reintroduced to day programs because those settings are not considered to provide opportunities for competitive, integrated employment. As a result, people like Mark languish in them.

While we understand that the payment of a minimum wage stems from an important principle of social equity, we hope the members of our congressional delegation would agree that not all individuals will necessarily benefit from the universal implementation of every such principle.

Individual choice is also a principle of social equity. If it is possible to give individuals a choice among wage policies without harming others, it can be a win-win situation for all.