All People Must Work
Every
person needs to be needed. This has always been one of my strongest
beliefs. The need to be needed may be as important as the need for
food, clothing and shelter. The need to be needed may be even greater
than our need for love. For many people, work is the primary way we
get to feel needed. Work
brings meaning to life, provides a social connection, can be a
pleasurable and fun experience and, of course, is the linchpin to
building an economic future for one's self and one's family.
Yet most people with disabilities do not work. Many people with
disabilities do not work not because of physical, mental or emotional
constraints, but because we are literally not allowed to work.
To
understand my passion for work, it’s important to know that my
parents are Holocaust survivors. During the war, people with
disabilities in ghettos and concentration camps who were unable to
work, were instantly killed because they were seen as worthless;
having no value. Work was the only way to survive. As a child with
Cerebral Palsy, my parents were fearful for my life and did all they
could to foster my self-reliance. My mother woke me at 5:30 each
morning and would insist I dress myself, even though it took 2 hours
to do so. At night, I’d get 2 dinners. One dinner I had to feed
myself. I’d spend so much energy feeding myself that dinner, I’d
be more hungry after I
ate than before. Only then would my mother feed me the
second dinner. Since walking symbolized normality, my parents did not
allow me to use a wheelchair until high school. This forced me to
walk, which was slow, difficult, laborious and consequently not very
practical. These tasks may seem extreme today, and
today I know that a key to independent living is knowing when and how
to get assistance. However, through
my efforts to succeed in these tasks, I learned the value of hard
work. I also learned that determination and perseverance are the
tools to achievement!
Throughout my work
career, work has been the major way I defined myself. Regardless of
whether it was my first job as a pool-hall cashier at my Alma-mater
(Hofstra University), or my last job as a Senior Vice President, IT
Manager at Wells Fargo, work is one of the main ways that I felt I
contributed something to this world. Whether I was a security guard
on graveyard shift at the dorms in college, or the Executive Director
of the Computer Technologies Program (CTP), a computer training
program for people with disabilities which I co-founded in 1975,
working always made me proud. It gave me a sense of purpose.
Working
is also one of the best ways to feel and be accepted. My disability
is very obvious. I can’t sit upright (sitting in my powered
wheelchair, I'd never be considered a role model for good posture). I
have involuntary movements and my speech impairment is significant.
At Wells Fargo, I loved rolling into meetings where people did not
know me. The tension in the room was so thick you could cut it with a
knife. At
first, no one would make eye contact, but as the meeting gained
momentum, there was a great sense of relief when the team began to
focus in on my ideas rather than my disability.
At
times, people struggled to understand my speech, but there was always
someone
in
the group who could help interpret and communicate for me.
Inevitably, by the end of the meeting, I always found myself chatting
with folks and feeling like part of the team.
Having people with
disabilities at work often results in innovation, creativity and an
overall better work environment. As a teacher at CTP, my students
gained confidence in understanding the subject matter by having to
help each other understand my speech. At Wells Fargo, I often
marveled at how quickly computer operators learned to ask good yes or
no questions when they called me in the middle of the night. I still
remember how, in the early ‘80’s, before online computing, Wells
Fargo dispatched an armored truck at 2am to bring me, and my
non-collapsible wheelchair, to the data center to fix a system’s
problem. Work
is also critically important to the economics of disability. Perhaps
the biggest disadvantage of having a disability is that it is very
expensive! We are aware of the high cost of health care. We often
forget about the high cost of Personal Assistant Services. The
cost of hiring a personal assistant for varying levels of care adds
up quickly.
For a person with a “high-cost” disability who is unemployed,
the government pays for the cost of the personal assistant along with
other disability benefits and subsidized housing services.
Since
my childhood in the 1950's, the unemployment rate for people with
disabilities has always been above 70%. Laws including the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA) of 1990 have made this country much more accessible and
accepting. However they have done nothing to improve employment. As
co-Vice Chair of the President's Committee of Employment for People
with Disabilities during the Clinton Administration, I witnessed
many
staff and committee members work endlessly, but unsuccessfully, to
get more people with disabilities employed. An enormous amount of
time, energy and money
have been spent by government agencies and NGOs in an attempt to
improve employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities,
to no avail.
After 29 years of
working for Wells Fargo, I retired to start a disability-focused
employment company that specializes in staffing and placement.
Abilicorp was founded to improve employment for people with
disabilities in a business-like fashion rather than through
charitable and government agencies. It was designed to be a
contracting firm, finding people with disabilities to fulfill job
demands, instead of an agency searching for places that would hire
their clients. For various reasons, including unfortunate timing
which coincided with the recent economic downturn, Abilicorp, also,
was unsuccessful.
As
a result of my experience with Abilicorp, I now believe, more than
ever before, that there are systemic problems which intrinsically
inhibit people with disabilities from working and being productive.
Our
society holds very low expectations for individuals with
disabilities. Our government's defining of disability as the
'inability to work' in order to receive disability benefits is an
inherent disincentive. The continual pleading with employers to hire
people with disabilities who usually have less work experience than
their peers, portrays us as needy individuals. The ever-present view
that people with disabilities always need something while ignoring
the basic need to be needed inevitably leads to poor self-esteem.
These currently accepted mores and practices must change!
I am dedicating the rest of my retirement to see that they do
change. Towards that goal, I helped create The World Institute on
Disability's Center on Economic Growth (CEG) in 2011.
WID’s CEG measures
success as creating a level playing field where people with
disabilities have the same employment rate, earning power and
asset-building opportunities as their non-disabled peers. Those of
us representing the CEG believe that until government invests in the
success of people with disabilities, rather than continuing programs
and practices that relegate people with disabilities to a poverty
position, people with disabilities will remain unemployed,
underutilized and undervalued. We believe that now is the time to
change the paradigm of how we think about economic growth for people
with disabilities. As entitlements continue to be questioned and
their funding becomes more tenuous, we must embrace the belief and
create the reality that people with disabilities are equal members in
our society and full economic partners. We must change our
mindset from providing disability benefits and safety-nets, to
providing what it takes to enable people to successfully fulfill
their role in the economic growth of themselves, their family and
their extended community. Economic success for people with
disabilities should be defined exactly the same way it is for
everyone. Economic success is taking full advantage of opportunities
one can find or create that uses one's abilities to be as productive
as one can be and as prosperous as one wants to be. The return on
investment of this paradigm shift can be both significant and
measurable.
WID's CEG has been
collaborating with the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL)
in developing the ACCESS Program (Adult Coaching, Counseling, and
Employment Support Services). We will soon be working on getting
Congress to pass legislation enabling us to demonstrate how the
Access Program can replace the current Supplemental Security Income
(SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) programs for
young adults with disabilities, ages 18 to 30, in 5 states. The
Access Program is being designed to eliminate work disincentives,
promote employment and expect participants to be as productive as
they can be. Instead of a check compensating them for their inability
to work, participants will receive a stipend to offset their high
cost of disability. Every participant will be expected to develop and
follow an Individual Career Plan (ICP). Tasks on the ICP may include
activities such as:
- being employed
- starting businesses
- attending school
- attending training programs
- internships
- volunteering
- attending rehabilitation programs
- attending day programs
- pursuing personal enrichment goals
- understanding what supports and accommodations are available
The
Access Program will also coordinate all services the young adults
with disabilities need to successfully perform their ICP. For me, the
Access Program represents the greatest chance I have of completing
the number one thing I have on my bucket list –
to
increase the employment participation
rate of people with disabilities to an equivalent rate of the general population.
rate of people with disabilities to an equivalent rate of the general population.
The
Disability Movement has historically been about changing paradigms.
Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, the predominant paradigm
regarding disability was that people with disabilities had to “adjust
to their environment”. Our goal was to look and sound and act as
‘normal’ as possible. It wasn't until the paradigm changed and
we realized that ‘society should be accessible to all people’
that true progress began to occur. Surprisingly, the predominant
paradigm in regards to employment of people with disabilities has not
changed. We still hear “hire people with disabilities”, and
“people with disabilities can work.” In this global economy, when
employers know they can hire very qualified and experienced people
anywhere in the world, expecting them to hire people with
disabilities will only get harder. As a retired senior vice president
of Wells Fargo Bank, hearing that ‘people with disabilities can
work’, is demeaning and patronizing. The crux of the problem behind
the employment of people with disabilities lies in these antiquated
constructs. The paradigm for the 21st
century should be that everyone must be productive. Now is the time
to raise expectations, to determine how we will be productive, and
determine how we will create our own prosperity. This is how we can
fulfill our need to be needed.
