[ASAN] We Did It

Post Reply New Topic

Hi folks,

Two weeks ago, they said it couldn't be done. They said including disabled workers now being paid less than minimum wage in the executive order President Obama had just announced guaranteeing a $10.10/hour minimum wage for federal contract workers was just not possible.

Today, I'm standing in the White House watching President Obama put his signature to an executive order that includes disabled workers. I'm watching the President and other leading figures in the administration speak with passion and commitment about economic opportunity for all Americans, including people with disabilities. And I know exactly who we have to thank for this wonderful moment: you.

Without your advocacy, your emails and donations and volunteering, none of this could have happened. If not for the hundreds of people who emailed and called the White House and Department of Labor in the last week, we wouldn't be here. This is one of our biggest steps forward in the fight against subminimum wage and the sheltered workshop industry in years. We took on their lobbyists and won an unqualified victory. You mattered today, and for the sake of the thousands of disabled workers who stand to benefit, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Now it's time to thank President Obama and Secretary of Labor Tom Perez for hearing our voices on this issue
and to ask them to stand with us in the fight to come to repeal Section 14(c), an outdated relic from the 1930s that allows disabled workers to be paid pennies an hour, for all Americans, not just those employed by government service and concession contractors. Will you join us in lending your name to this effort?

Sign our petition to thank President Obama and Secretary Perez for including disabled workers, and ask them to work with us to convince Congress to end subminimum wage for all workers with disabilities:
http://action.autisticadvocacy.org/p/di ... _KEY=10220

Let our community's gratitude and resolve be heard. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your advocacy. And, as always, Nothing About Us, Without Us.

Regards,
Ari Ne'eman
President
Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Autistic Self Advocacy Network: PO Box 66122 | Washington, DC 20035

Don't celebrate yet, Ken.

I hear they're turning the sheltered workshop biz over to the insurance companies...

...who will be getting paid 15% off the top for running the thing. You know, as a SERVICE.

I think it's out of the frying pan and into the fire. A change of scenery, while the story remains the same.

the whole Sheltered Workshops idea seemed like a way to get away with slave labour. Not sure, but the idea of only paying someone about ,20 is no better than Chinese Sweatshops. It is unsustainable for living in a third-world nation, much less a developed nation. Even with parents providing a house and clothing, usw. there is still very few ways to eat and have drink for about ,20 or to buy petrol for the trip to and from work, if they have their own car.

I used to board the city bus every morning at 6;45 am and find it full of people with developmental disabilities on the way to their "workshop" with their handler, or trainer or whatever walking up and down the bus herding them like cattle and them shuffling off the bus at their little "center" for their days "activities'. Is this what they are talking about when they say "Sheltered Workshops?" And who is making money of sending all of these semi functioning, semi adults off to the concentration camp at that hour each morning? And what do they do all day in there, beyond the chain link fences, while they wait to be shuttled back onto the bus and driven en mass back to whatever building they dragged them from in their sleep?