'Sweatshops' or a needed choice? Michigan debates the future of jobs for workers with disabilities

EAST LANSING - Four days a week, Laura Kaufman rises early and packs her lunch. Some days, she stuffs it inside her Spider-Man backpack, some days a purple rolling bag.

She then boards a CATA van shortly after 8 a.m. at the East Lansing home she shares with her father. Her destination: a community mental health program for adults with disabilities.

Kaufman, 44, has Down syndrome. She likes bowling and coffee with friends on Mondays and shopping on Thursday mornings, all offerings of the community program. But what she looks forward to the most is her job at a manufacturing workshop where she earns just over $2 an hour doing simple repetitive tasks, alongside other workers with significant disabilities.

“I like to work,” she explains. “I like the staff.”

Low-paid jobs and workshops like Kaufman’s are at the heart of a heated debate that’s playing out in mid-Michigan and across the country. It’s sharply divided the disability community.

Some critics call such places “sweatshops” or sheltered workshops that take advantage of vulnerable people by paying them little and segregating them. 

“What we’ve done with sheltered workshops over the years is that we’ve created a whole industry that’s built on the fact that we can pay people with disabilities below the minimum wage in segregated environments,” said Elmer Cerano, executive director of Michigan Protection & Advocacy Service, Inc., a nonprofit organization that advocates for people with disabilities.

If workers are being paid a fraction of a wage because they are considered just 25% as productive as non-disabled workers, maybe they need to have more suitable jobs that fit their skills, Cerano reasoned.

“Now we want to promote real employment opportunities for real people in the real community for real wages with benefits just like everybody else," he said.

Others fire back that the jobs are a choice that should be offered to workers where they have the support they need. Not everyone will be able to find a job in the community, they argue.

Kaufman’s father, Dr. Matt Kaufman, a retired physician, is among those who think the advocates are going too far. He fears that their efforts, while based on good intentions, will actually hurt his daughter because she will not be able to find a job in community and the workshop’s future is in question.

“She just loves it. It’s her whole life,” he said about her workshop job.  “She’s so happy to work and she’s so pleased to get the paycheck. It isn’t the money. It’s the feeling that they are doing something important and valuable. All this is threatened now.”

He fears her days instead will be filled with coloring books and puzzles.

Rooted in the 1930s

Some advocates argue that the sheltered workshop model and the sub-minimum wages paid to workers like Kaufman have outlived their usefulness. Rooted in the 1930s, they were a good idea at the time when those with disabilities had no other options, they argue. The programs allow a smaller or commensurate wage based on comparing it to productivity of non-disabled workers. Kaufman’s productivity, for example, is 25% of that of non-disabled workers, according to a report from her employer.

In all, about 7,400 Michigan workers with disabilities statewide are paid the sub-minimum wage, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, but their numbers are dropping.

Six years ago, there were 81 employers in Michigan paying below-minimum wage. There are 62 this year. Those are mostly community groups such as public mental health and nonprofit providers, but also include a few businesses and schools. 

Kaufman does what is called piece work at the Transitions North workshop run by the Community Mental Health Authority of Clinton, Eaton, Ingham counties near the Capital Region International Airport.

Transitions North employs 125 people with disabilities; 100 of them earn less than minimum wage.

The 29-year-old Transitions North is the last in mid-Michigan to pay less than minimum wage after Peckham Industries, Inc., a Lansing-based nonprofit rehabilitation organization, decided last year to pay all its workers at least that much.

Read more: Peckham ends sub-minimum pay

The trend away from the sub-minimum wage jobs is driven by a national movement and the exposure of some horrific abuses. At a now-closed turkey processing plant in Atalissa, Iowa, for instance, 32 men with disabilities were paid as little as 41 cents per hour and lived in squalid conditions for decades. A judge said they were virtually enslaved and a jury awarded them $240 million in damages in 2013. 

Hillary Clinton, Democratic nominee for president, has called for an end to sub-minimum wage jobs. And newer federal mandates, through health and job training dollars sent to the states, require that federal funds directed at people with disabilities be spent in housing, job training and employment in integrated settings. States are crafting their own plans to follow those mandates.

Michigan and other states have a March 2019 deadline to transition to more integrated settings to continue Medicaid dollars that are used on day programs such as Transitions North.

Cerano’s organization and others want to see public dollars used to develop jobs in the community for those with disabilities. One idea is to carve out a specific task, instead of requiring multiple tasks, for a worker with a disability while removing that task from other employees’ workloads. Adaptive technology can also help workers with disabilities.

States such as Vermont and Maine decided to close their workshops years ago, while lawsuits have been the driver of change in others.

Read more: Mixed reports from other states when workshops closed

It's not clear what will happen in Michigan.

“There’s a huge amount of uncertainty and anxiety both in the provider community and among individuals and their families,” said Todd Culver, executive director of MARO, an association representing nonprofit and public mental health organizations that serve workers with disabilities across the state.

In 2014, Michigan spent far more on facility-based work, what critics still call sheltered work, than integrated employment — $48 million versus $27 million, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy.

And only 30% of those with disabilities were employed compared with 75% of the nondisabled working age population in Michigan.

Lt. Gov. Brian Calley is the point person in Gov. Rick Snyder administration for “Employment First.” That term describes the national movement to integrate people with disabilities in mainstream workplaces.

Calley said he sees a role for facility-based workshops and, reluctantly, sub-minimum wage jobs, but with safeguards in place that ensure workers are offered opportunities to first work in regular workplaces.

A year ago, Calley signed an executive order calling for “Employment First” policies to get more jobs for those with disabilities in the community or integrated settings.

Dohn Hoyle, public policy director for The Arc Michigan, which advocates for people with developmental disabilities, called Michigan’s version of Employment First “weak.”

“Many states have put it in public policy. Some have it in statute. Michigan has instead a governor’s edict that we think is weak compared with what we see in other states,” he said.

Calley disagreed, saying the state’s policy is a strong one, offering flexibility and choice. He said the administration has resisted a “one size fits all” approach.

Closing facility-based workshops won’t work because “there aren’t enough places today that are successful at hiring people with disabilities” Calley said.  

“Many would just end up being back home playing video games in their parents’ basement. It’s just not a good outcome.”

Kristen Columbus, chair of the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council, a federally funded advocacy organization appointed by the governor, said in a written response to questions that the executive order was a “good start.” But, she said, it is flawed because it allows workers to stay in programs such as Transitions North permanently, rather than use them for training and a stepping stone to a job in the community.

She said such programs can still be used to help people with disabilities build skills to find jobs in the regular workplace.

“There is most definitely a role for these providers in the provision of customized and supportive employment services to support persons with significant disabilities finding employment,” she said.

Proud of her paycheck

Laura Kaufman isn’t forced to work when she’s at Transitions North. She has the choice of other activities, such as heading outside to sit in the sunshine, playing board games or making a snack in the kitchen. But she always chooses work when she can.

Matt Kaufman said his daughter receives about $1,000 a month in federal disability benefits. Over a 12-month period ending June 30, she supplemented that with earnings of $936.72 for 426 hours of work.

That’s an hourly rate of about $2.20, far below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

She’s proud of her paycheck, purchasing potato chips and CDs with her earnings

Matt Kaufman describes his daughter as a “miracle child in a lot of ways.” She was the fifth child and only daughter born to Kaufman and his late wife, Lois, also a doctor, in 1972.

Kaufman’s said his late wife was devoted to their youngest child, helping her learn to read and write.  Laura nearly died as a teenager from leukemia in 1988, the same disease that claimed the life of Lois Kaufman in 1992.

After her mother’s death, Laura Kaufman continued at school, graduating from Okemos High School in 1999, as Michigan allows special education students to stay until age 26. She then briefly held a job folding sheets in a hotel basement. The working conditions were dreadful, Matt Kaufman said, and he quickly removed her from the job.

Other efforts to find a job in the community didn’t work out. She’s now been at Transitions North workshop for about 16 years.  

That type of longevity – as opposed to a stepping stone to a competitive job — draws criticism. Only a few leave for competitive employment. Six of the 125 workers at Transitions North left for a job outside the agency in the past year and two returned, said Richard Jenness, Transitions coordinator, in an email. Four who were successful got jobs cleaning, washing dishes and working in laundry service and at a gardening center. The two who came back couldn't do the required work in a laundry, he said.

Kaufman’s father describes her as a person with a kind heart who isn’t afraid to speak up for herself. She taught herself to use sign language to communicate with people who are deaf and she has a sharp memory for names.

In 2004, she wrote a fan letter to NBC’s “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay. She ended up with a trip to visit the set with a cameo appearance on the show.

On a recent Thursday, Kaufman went on a morning outing to a Dollar Tree store where she bought a large big bag of off-brand potato chips and a Mountain Dew soda, which she took takes to the workshop for her lunch.

She also packed mini-donuts, strawberry Fig Newtons, dill pickle chips and a baggie of vitamins to accompany a Big Mac from McDonald’s, her favorite meal. The staff said she likes to eat in the music room, away from the noise of others at the facility.

After a leisurely lunch, she walked slowly to the workshop to start an afternoon of work.

The workshop is a warehouse-style space with exposed heating vents and a concrete floor. It’s brightly lit and has windows supplemented by fluorescent lights.

Kaufman pulled a disposable hand wipe from her bag and cleaned her hands thoroughly before carefully adjusting her headphones over an MSU cap. She tuned her Walkman to a classical radio channel.

Then she set to work.

On this day, she and 30 other workers with disabilities, sat on molded plastic chairs or in wheelchairs at metal tables, putting plastic pipettes for Neogen Corp., a Lansing company, into a board with holes to hold the pipettes upright. Once a pegboard is filled, with 20 plastic pieces, the workers put them into a plastic bag with a slide top and toss them into a bin. The pipettes are used in food safety test kits.

Because many of the workers can’t count – though one fellow counted loudly as he filled a plastic bag — the pegboards are a way to ensure the right number of pieces make it into the bag.

After filling each bag, Kaufman hit a metal counter with satisfaction.

Contracts for work at Transitions North this year will bring in $373,000. About a third of that is paid to workers, about $125,000 in salaries, according to Community Mental Health. The workshop runs on contracts it brings in but Medicaid dollars are used to pay staff who help with skill-building of the clients.

Kaufman likes her job and is especially close to Pamm McDaniel, a friendly woman in a pink T-shirt and gray ponytail who runs the workshop. McDaniel has worked there since 1989. “She’s like a second mother to Laura,” Kaufman’s father, Matt, said.

At the beginning of the afternoon, McDaniel steered Kaufman away from the worker who was counting, knowing that the noise would bother Kaufman -- and that she is more than willing to speak up when irritated.

That’s the kind of trouble prevention that might be missing from a job in the larger community, staff members fear.

Dorothy Archambeau, program coordinator for Transitions North, said many workers also need help with personal hygiene and using the bathroom. Who will do that in the regular workplace? she asks.

“I feel like they don’t understand the level of the disability of the people that we work with,” she said. “They don’t understand the value the work holds for people.”

As for Laura Kaufman, when asked what she likes about her job, she shrugged.

“That’s a hard question,” she said, then added: “I like to work.”

Contact Judy Putnam at (517) 267-1304 or email her at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.