Employment and Labor

Employment and Labor

Authors:

Tal Araten-Bergman, Janikke Solstad Vedeler*, William N. Myhill, Peter Blanck

Affiliation:

The Burton Blatt Institute: Centers of Innovation on Disability at SyracuseUniversity

*Also affiliated with Norwegian Social Research (NOVA)

Address:

900 S. Crouse Avenue

Crouse-Hinds Hall, Suite 300

Syracuse, New York13244-2130

Phone: (315) 443-2863

Fax: (315) 443-9725

bbi.syr.edu

Email addresses:

Tal Araten-Bergman –

Janikke Solstad Vedeler –

William N. Myhill –

Peter Blanck –

Employment and Labor

Work is a defining feature in thehistory of the United States. Not only has work been a means of sustaining life by meeting basic needs, and providing stability to family and society, it also represents an activity through which individuals affirm their own identity and self-esteem. Successful employment has played a central role in the full inclusion of people with disabilities in mainstream society.

[A] Pre-Industrialization to the 20th Century

While people with disabilities have been excluded from the labor market throughout history, prior to U.S.industrialization in the early 1800s, individuals with disabilities were generally integrated into the community and protected by ties of kinship and participation in wider social networks. There was no need for specific employment interventions. Agriculture and manufacturing supplied most jobs and the family social structure furnished basic security. Thus, people with disabilities were accommodated in families where the self-sufficient economic pattern provided a wide range of tasks that could be performed at a pace feasible for the individuals. However,thosewith disabilities whose families could not care for them were left to the mercy of their community.

Nonetheless, in the AmericanColonies, disability often wasviewed as a moral question. Community assistance was limited and dependent on economicconditions and the attitude of its members.Occasionally a colonialGeneral Assembly would find it necessary to order the community to take responsibility for its indigent residents in order to prevent their wandering into neighboring towns or counties seeking sustenance. But even when the colony took up this responsibilityit likely was carried out in an inappropriate manner.Persons with mentalillness or retardation were frequently placed andcared for in special town council appropriations or jails.Other communities solved their problems involving dependency by “auctioning off” persons with disabilities into slavery.

As industrialization began taking hold in the early 19th century, an exodus of workers from the countryside to the city resulted in the dissolution of extended family networks. Asylums and workhouses were established to meet the growing indigent population and others labeled “IDIOTS”—individuals with disabilities who could not sustain a living in the community within the context of individualized or nuclear family units.

In addition, the Industrial Revolution resulted in increased accidents and deaths caused by the new machinery and exposure to toxic materials.Rapid technological progress led to crowded, unsanitary working and living conditions, and had a profound impact on the onset of work-related disabilities and occupational diseases. The introduction of power machinery into mines, stone-working facilities, and foundries gave rise to epidemics of silicosis and black lung disease among workers. Factory conditions “paralyzed, burned, blinded, deafened,” took limbs, and impaired other physical and mental functions.Nevertheless, in no occupation(aside from mining and lumberjacking)did workers experience death and disability as frequently as they did in the United States’ rail trades. Despite gains in railroad safety, the catastrophic injuryof losing an arm or a legcould not be entirely avoided, and railroaders andtheir families often found themselves withoutbasic economic needs.

Social justice came to be a key concern in the 19thcentury, and particularly at its end in the progressive political movement. Many forward-looking vocational rehabilitation organizations were established during this era. The first of these was the New England Asylum for the blind (later renamed Perkins School for the Blind), incorporated in Boston in 1829 to train blind individuals for manufacturing jobs. Some programs evolved under the sponsorship of religious organizations, such as Goodwill Industries, the Salvation Army, and the Jewish Vocational Service Agencies. Others were the result of more secular private philanthropy, such as the Sunbeam Circle and the Red Cross Institution for Crippled and Disabled Men. The first American school for crippled children,THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLFOR CRIPPLEDAND DEFORMED CHILDREN,was established in Boston in 1893 to train children with physical impairments in the skills necessary to earn a living. Yetsuch efforts were few and far between.

The first comprehensive federal initiatives addressing individuals with disabilities date back to the American Civil War (1861-1865). In 1862 Congress implemented a pension program for Union Army veterans with disabilities, who were unable to work. Program eligibility was based on a medically-diagnosed “incapacity to perform manual labor,” which by linking the definition of disability to an inability to work began to institutionalize the medical model of disability. This model viewed disability as personal tragedy, hampering equal participation in society, and thereby leading to social welfare policies addressing the needs of people with disabilities as a form of charity. Moreover, this model would influence American societal views regarding the place of individuals with disabilities in the labor market for over a century.

By the end of the 19th century there was a growing awareness of another group of people with disabilities: thosewith work related injuries or occupational diseases. The growing number of workers who became ill or disabled as a consequence of their work taskshad no recourse other than to sue their employers under common law, an expensive and time-consuming process. The court system was crowded, causing long delays. Compensation for injuries was usually insufficient and uncertain. The employee sometimes was forced to bear the expense of injury himself or throw himself uponthe mercy of others.

[A] The Early 20th Century

The first workers’ compensation law was passed in Maryland in 1902 and the first such law covering federal employees was passed in 1906.These laws were enacted to provide workers injured on the job with prompt, equitable, and guaranteed benefits. Employers, in turn, were protected from potentially catastrophic loss by a stated amount of specific benefits for the injuries suffered by the employee. Under workers’compensation statutes employers are required to make provisions such that workers who are injured in accidents arising “out of or in the course of employment” receive medical treatment and receive payments to replace lost income. By 1949 all states had enacted some kind of workers’ compensation regime.

[B] The Federal Vocational Rehabilitation Program

Before the 1920s, training and vocational rehabilitation were provided only by private and religious groups. This course changed after World War I, when the influx of veterans with disabilities from overseas battlefields proved too much for private institutions to serve. In this pre-public welfare era, there was an urgent need for federal intervention to give veterans with disabilities opportunities to return to work and productivity. The first federal vocational rehabilitation program for veterans with disabilities, the Smith-Sears Act of 1918, aimedto return them to civil employment. In 1920, the National Vocational Rehabilitation Act (the SMITH-FESS ACT) extended these vocational rehabilitation principles to civilians with physical impairments. In 1954, Mary Switzer(1900-1971) as the director of the Vocational Rehabilitation Program shaped amendments to this Actthattripled federal funding for programs and services specifically addressing the integration of individuals with physical disabilities into employment.

Funds were appropriated for vocational guidance and training, occupational adjustment, prosthetics, and job placement services for people with physical disabilities. Federal expenditures increased between the 1930s and 1960s, and eligibility criteria were expanded during this period to include people with developmental and mental impairments. In 1923 the U.S. Department of Labor and Printing founded the“Bureau of Labor for the Deaf”. Its aim was to study and promote methods of education for the deafand to encourage appropriate employment for deaf persons.

These early vocational laws aimed to “cure and restore.” Their premise was that people with physical and mental impairments were maladjusted and could achieve acceptance in the labor market only by “overcoming” their impairments. Physicians and policymakers required persons with disabilities to pursue normalcy, particularly in the workplace. An interdisciplinary team,including a psychiatrist, a physician, social workers, occupational and physical therapists, vocational rehabilitation experts, and on occasion an anthropologist, would assess the individual and provide a diagnosis. If the person was determinedto be capable of integration into the labor market, after the “right” training, he/she would be referred to a “sheltered (non-integrated) workshop”. Consequently, these programs accepted only people with disabilities whowere perceived as capable of being “cured”; in effect, onlythose workers with the greatest chance of securing a job. For instance, from 1920 to 1943, the vocational rehabilitation program served only 12,000 people, while approximately 250,000 became disabled every year. Additionally, in the 1920s and 1930s selection favored rehabilitating young, white men.

[B] The Great Depression and the League of the Physically Handicapped

On October 29, 1929, the U.S. stock market crash.This day, known as “Black Tuesday”, marked the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States. The depression had devastating effects.Personal incomes, tax revenues, prices, and profits declined sharply. Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as farming, mining and logging suffered the most.

Between 1933 and 1938PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt initiated the New Deal—a series of programs with the goal of giving relief to the people and economy of the United States, andputting as many persons back to work as possible.Federal employment programs such as the Works Project Administration, the National Recovery Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps exemplify the variability and sometimes socially constructed nature of disability.Initially people with disabilities were classified as “unemployable” and were denied access to the jobs and resources available through the various New Deal programs.

This discriminatory categorizing was challenged in May of 1935 when members of theLeague of the Physically Handicapped & Independent Livingpicketedin front of the New York headquarters of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of the primary New Deal agencies for employment. They demanded that “handicapped people receive a just share of the millions of jobs being given out by the government.” InSeptember 1936 the League joined forces with the League for the Advancement of the Deaf to secure a promise that 7% of future WPA jobs in New York would go to people with disabilities. As a result, 1500 people with disabilities gained employment. Unfortunately, more than 600 lost their jobs the next spring during nationwide lay-offs.

The League’s experience with New York’s WPA was indicative of both its successes and failures. Although the League’s actions did notalter federal policies towards people with disabilities, its efforts resulted in getting a number of people jobs and opened the public sector to some workers with disabilities.

[A] World War II and the 1950s

The notion that people with disabilities can be productive and vital part of the labor market was furthershown during World War IIwhencompetition for jobs disappeared. Employers were willing to hire anyone who could do the work in their plants and shops. People with disabilities by the tens of thousands were engaged in gainful employment, butthe labor market returned to the status quowhen the economy shifted from war to peace. Millions of veterans cameback to enter the labor market and many of them were assured under the mobilization laws that they could displace anyone who had taken their jobs. This series of events epitomized the proposition that people with disabilities are the last hired and the first fired.

[B] Sheltered Workshops

The original concept of sheltered workshops was to promote a protected environment where the individual with a disability could experience the stimulation and learning required for work without the elements of competitive employment. The workshop was an effort to allow the individual the opportunity to work without having to risk failure, which it was assumed would occur in mainstream work environments. Rather than provide normalization, the workshop sheltered the individual from standard frustrations, problems, and risks while allowing him or her to experience a form of normal job requirements, such as paychecks, time clocks, work hours, supervision, and production schedules. These workshops were aimed at training the person but ignored societal barriers and attitudes generally prohibiting the inclusion of individuals with disabilities in the labor market. Rarely hasthis “train and place” approach lead to the integration of individuals with disabilities in the competitive workforce.

[B] The Social Security Act

As the twentieth century progressed, U.S. society addressed the economic needs of individuals with disabilities in other ways as well. Congress enacted laws providing health and welfare benefits to different groups of individuals with disabilities. The Social Security Act of 1935 established a federal and state system of health services for “crippled” children. In 1954, the Act was amended to provide monthly benefits for “eligible” workers who had become disabled. This Act was again amended in 1972 to provide benefits to limited groups of poor individuals with disabilities.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) ran two federal programs: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) for individuals who had a work history and paid taxes, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to assist individuals who had never been in the labor market and with income and assets below set thresholds. Eligibility for these programs was based on a medical model of disability, viewing disability as a long-term or permanent excuse from any obligation to work. These social welfare programs were designed to serve only the “truly needy”.Earning more than the set threshold would render the person no longer eligible, and they would lose their benefits.

[A] The Emergent Disability Antidiscrimination Movement, 1960s-1980s

During the civil rights era of the 1960s, minority groups began to view equal access to society as a fundamental right, and some within the disability community started to view disability rights as a part of this larger struggle. A growing disability rights movementfought for federal protections from the social and economic inequalities individuals with disabilities encounter.Activists such as ED ROBERTS in California and JUDY HEUMAN in New York took further the conception that individuals with disabilities are not disabled by their individual capacities, but by the ideas, attitudes and misconceptions of an able-bodied society, perpetuating prejudice, exclusion, discrimination, and inequality.

In this struggle individuals with disabilities started to challenge the medical model as expressed in rehabilitation services. An alternative model of supported employment was developed, based on the idea that individuals with significant disabilities learn better if trained in the integrated work settings of their choice and provided with on-going support. This “place and train” model was based on the premise that even individuals with significant disabilities, given the right support, can be integrated into inclusive and normative settings.

The disability civil rights movement had its first majorvictory with Congress’s passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which established a critical bridge between disability and antidiscrimination law and policy. Section 504 of this act, ratified first in 1977 after a national 28-day sit-in staged by Frank Bowe (1947-2007), prohibits discrimination byrecipients of federal funding on the basis of a disability towards otherwise qualified individuals with disabilities.

Despite the rights and protections provided by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, research and practice found that discrimination and exclusion from the mainstream labor market remained widespread. In the mid-1980s, the disability community and policymakers recognized the need for more comprehensive civil rights protections while addressing the responsibilities and obligations of employers, state,local government, and public entities. A response to this need came with passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the hallmark of the disability civil rights movement, signed into law on July 26,1990. The ADA provides a comprehensive national mandate for eliminating discrimination against persons with disabilities, and serves as a model of antidiscrimination law for the world.