              Sheltered Workshops and Blind Alleys

     In 1971 the leader of the organized blind movement in the
United States sent a message to the agencies serving the blind.
This is what he said:

     If you tell us that you are important and necessary to our
lives, we reply: It is true. But tear down every agency for the
blind in the nation, destroy every workshop, and burn every
professional journal; and we can build them all back if they are
needed. But take away the blind, and your journals will go dusty on
the shelves. Your counselors will walk the streets for work, and
your broomcorn will mold and rot in your sheltered shops. Yes, we
need you; but you need us, too. We intend to have a voice in your
operation and your decisions since what you do affects our lives.
We intend to have representation on your boards, and we intend for
you to recognize our organizations and treat us as equals. We are
not your wards, and there is no way for you to make us your wards.
The only question left to be answered is whether you will accept
the new conditions and work with us in peace and partnership or
whether we must drag you kicking and screaming into the new era.
But enter the new era you will, like it or not.

     When Kenneth Jernigan delivered that emphatic message at the
1971 convention of the National Federation of the Blind, the
struggle to reform the agencies and rehabilitate the nation's
workshops for the blind was still being waged. And nearly twenty
years later, as the National Federation of the Blind celebrated its
Golden Anniversary, that struggle had not yet ended. But much had
changed in half a centuryincluding the character and dimensions of
the struggle. The movement itself, embodied in the National
Federation of the Blind, had grown astonishingly in size and
strength to become a dominant player in the blindness system and a
critical factor in the shaping of public policy toward the blind.
And the agency establishment in its turninfluenced by the
Federation and infiltrated by Federationistshad matured
substantially over the years and even mellowed somewhat in its
relations with the movement. Nevertheless, there remained deep
pockets of resistance and resentment within the blindness system,
most notably in those notorious backwaters of custodial control
which represented the residual remains of the Victorian almshouses
and workhousesnamely, the sheltered workshops.

     The story of the sheltered workshops as institutions for the
blind has its origin in the poor laws of the Dark Ages. (Some would
say that today's workshops are living relics of the Dark Ages.) In
their American incarnation the sheltered shops grew up during the
nineteenth century in connection with both the workhouses for the
poor and the early schools for the blind. The effect which these
ancestral influences had upon the course of the workshop
movementand upon its hapless blind participantswas delineated in an
extraordinarily meticulous analysis of state statutes and other
data governing the programs which was prepared by Jacobus tenBroek
and published in two versionscomplete account with full references
(Braille Monitor, June, 1960) and a shorter version with notes and
references removed (Blind American, May, 1962). Professor
tenBroek's scholarly study concluded on the hard evidence of the
statutes that the sheltered workshop as it exists within the states
today is a welfare `catch-all' which means all things to all men,
and therefore that it has become an anachronism which America, if
it is to practice successfully the democratic welfare philosophy it
professes, can ill afford to perpetuate.

     The abridged version of Dr. tenBroek's classic paper follows:

     THE CHARACTER AND FUNCTION OF SHELTERED WORKSHOPS
                       by Jacobus tenBroek

     The institution of the sheltered workshop, for over a century
an inconspicuous feature of the American welfare scene, has
recently emerged from its obscurity to become the storm center of
one of the liveliest controversies in the entire field of social
work and public welfare. At the heart of the controversy is a
fundamental disagreement over the proper function and future role
of the sheltered shop. One viewpoint holds that a proper role of
the shops is that of providing work evaluation, determination of
abilities, and the development of work tolerance on the part of
disabled personsalong with vocational training itselfas part of the
process of vocational rehabilitation. More recently, doctors and
health officials have begun to campaign for the use of the workshop
as a medical facility for restorative, adjustive, and prevocational
services, centering around the principle of work therapy. Finally,
the oldest and perhaps still the most widely held viewpoint is that
which regards the workshop as a place of remunerative employment
for disabled individuals.

     Two of these approaches to the sheltered workshop find support
for their arguments in federal law and administrative rulings. The
proponents of the vocational adjustment and training function point
out that, since the passage of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act in
1954, sheltered workshops have been recognized as a legitimate
training adjunct of the federal-state vocational rehabilitation
program; and in addition they may now cite the majority ruling of
the National Labor Relations Board, handed down in March of this
year (1960), that rehabilitation is the essential function of the
workshop.

     The defenders of the employment status of the workshop may
demonstrate that, even with the Vocational Rehabilitation Act,
sheltered workshop is defined as primarily a place which provides
remunerative employment, and that in fact rehabilitation
administrators frequently regard the placement of their clients in
such shops as sufficient to meet the remunerative placement
requirements which are the ultimate objective of vocational
rehabilitation programs. Moreover, the employment argument finds
further support in the fact that the very exemption of sheltered
workshops from the minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor
Standards Act was granted on the premise that they are places of
employment.

     To some extent the issues raised by these differences of
viewpoint are theoretical in nature, involving such questions as:
What are the proper goals of workshops? What is their greatest
usefulness as instruments of welfare?

     To a larger extent, perhaps, the issues are practical. What in
actual fact are the functions of such shops? What are the
prevailing conditions of training, work, and release?

     On both the theoretical and practical levels, disagreement is
widespread and often acrimonious. Insofar as they are theoretical,
the questions raised by the workshop can only be settled by
reference to policies and goals. Insofar as they are practical,
such questions can only be answered by reference to fact.

     Unfortunately, some of those who are in a position to assemble
and disseminate the facts have not done so. For example, the
Sheltered Workshop Committee within the Department of Labor has not
chosen to fulfill its duties in these areas.

     One important source of information concerning sheltered work-
shops, however, is available to all. It consists of the statutes of
the various states governing their publicly operated sheltered
shops. Anyone with access to a law library can look at these
statutes. No doubt they yield their information by means of
complicated sentences and technical language, but they do yield it.
That information is, in large measure, the content of the pages to
follow.

     In particular, we shall seek to identify the salient
characteristics and purposes of the workshops as specified in these
lawswith reference to the objectives they purport to serve, the
nature of their opportunities and undertakings, the attitudes they
reflect toward those who participate in them, and their working
conditions and social atmosphere.

     The principal question to keep in mind through these pages is:
What light do they shed upon the basic issue of the proper role and
function of sheltered workshops within a system of welfare? Do they
distinguish amongor do they merely confuse and comminglethe
separate functions of (1) a vocational evaluation, adjustment, and
training center; (2) a therapeutic facility; and (3) a place of
remunerative employment?

     General Background

     Sheltered workshops, as such, first arose in America over a
century ago as an outgrowth of the special schools for the blind
whose curricula concentrated upon the provision of simple forms of
vocational trainingin such limited and manual skills as weaving,
knitting, and chair caning, as well as in music and similar arts.
At first it was the hope of the educators that the blind, with
proper instruction, will be able to maintain themselves free of
charge from their friends or the state. Unfortunately, however,
nothing had been done to persuade society of the capacities of
these blind trainees; and before long, as one report put it, Our
graduates began to return to us, representing the embarrassment of
their condition abroad, and soliciting employment at our hands.
Thus were born the sheltered workshopsas segregated places of
permanent employment for those regarded by society (if not by
themselves and their protectors) as unemployable.

     Although sheltered workshops emerged in their modern form a
century ago, their ancestry may be traced at least to the Middle
Ages. It is possible to distinguish four separate historical
associations from which the contemporary workshops derive: namely,
those of the workhouse, the church, the hospital, and the school.
Since the traces of this long and complicated heritage are still to
be seen in many sheltered workshops of today, it is instructive to
glance briefly at the sources and character of these various
influences.

     The oldest influence of all is that which had its origin in
religious protection of the disabled. Since the Church was the
first charitable organization, a federal official has written,
inevitably some lines of the workshop movement have strong
religious ties. When the indigent, the physically disabled, and the
mentally different were herded into the asylums of the 1700s, they
were being brought together not to ameliorate their condition but
simply to get them off the street. A primary concern of the church
for its disabled and indigent wards was with their souls as well as
with their bodieswith spiritual redemption and moral uplift perhaps
more than with vocational rehabilitation and physical restoration
as understood today. Among many privately operated workshops today,
such as those of the Salvation Army and the Society of St. Vincent
de Paul, these are still the principal goals of workshop activity.
The Volunteers of America (an offshoot of the Salvation Army)
currently sponsors at least 70 such workshops; while perhaps the
most successful of all the mission or church-sponsored workshop
chains is that of the Goodwill Industries, founded by a Methodist
minister in 1905, which by 1957 controlled 120 shops throughout the
country.

     A corollary line of development from which the contemporary
workshop has emerged is that of the medieval and early modern
hospital which, like the asylum, was generally under church
auspices, but may be distinguished in terms of its specific
function. European hospitals of the early sixteenth century were
described by one observer as those places where the sick are fed
and cared for, where a certain number of paupers are supported,
where boys and girls are reared, where abandoned infants are
nourished, where the insane are confined, and where the blind
dwell. The purpose of the hospital was primarily to care for the
sick and totally disabled, but in the bedlam created by its motley
population there were also the rudiments of school, nursery,
almshouse, and insane asylum. Those present-day workshops which
incorporate the provision of medical and therapeutic services
therefore may be seen as the outcome of a line of development
reaching back to the medieval hospital and extending through the
American county hospitals of more recent timesinstitutions which
also sought to fulfill the double function of healing the sick and
employing the handicapped.

     Another significant precursor of the sheltered workshop was
the workhouse, or almshouse, which evolved as an institution of
work relief accompanying the Poor Laws of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. For present purposes the chief importance of
the workhouse was that it was designed, not primarily for the ill
or handicapped, but for the able-bodied poor. The workhouse
provided an institutionalized form of poor-relief; and in keeping
with Elizabethan assumptions of the characterological causes of
poverty, it was made as disagreeable as possible and its wages held
to a bare minimum above starvation so that not many would willingly
seek admission or contentedly remain. The gospel of work as the
means of salvation (and, conversely, of idleness as the route to
damnation) virtually converted the almshouse into a forced-labor
camp; indeed, the distinction between workhouse and jailhouse was
often difficult to discern.

     Finally, as indicated above, the sheltered workshops grew up
as adjuncts of the special schools for the blind established in the
nineteenth century. However, it is significant that these schools
soon deliberately severed their connection with the shops they had
themselves created, as it became apparent that the functions of
education and employment could not feasibly be mixed within the
same program. Thereafter, the workshops came to be operated
independently of educational and custodial institutions.

     The historical development of modern welfare philosophy has
been one of increasing recognition of the necessary distinctions
and incompatibilities among these several emphases and approaches
to the problem of disability. Some among themnotably that of the
workhouse and almshouse, and possibly also to some extent that of
the religious missionhave come to be recognized as anachronisms.
Others, such as the vocational training emphasis of the early
schools and the sheltered employment conception which succeeded it,
still retain some support in welfare theory and policy. But it is
clear that the direction of progress has been completely away from
the primitive notion of an encompassing bedlam in which all the
sick and disabled, rejected and despised members of society would
be thrown togetherand in which the various and dissimilar functions
of the church, the school, the factory, the hospital, and the
prison would be simultaneously carried on.

     It remains to be seen whether the statutes of the states
governing their publicly operated sheltered workshops have kept
pace with this clear direction of progress.

     Conditions of Labor

     State employees generally are excluded from compulsory cover-
age of unemployment compensation under the Internal Revenue Code of
1954. The Code also exempts charitable organizations, including
privately operated workshops, from compulsory coverage. Such states
as Oregon, California, Washington, and Wisconsin have taken legis-
lative and administrative steps to extend the coverage of
unemployment compensation to some or all of the workers in their
state-operated sheltered workshops. With respect to privately
operated workshops, Hawaii is the only one of thirty- two states
having such shops to take legislative action changing their status.
It did so by dropping the exemptions of charitable organizations
from unemployment compensation coverage. In short, the vast
majority of employees of sheltered workshops (both public and
private) throughout the country are without the protection of
unemployment compensation laws.

     The workers in sheltered shops face an additional deprivation.
The Labor Management Relations Act excludes the states and their
political subdivisions from the definition of employer for purposes
of collective bargaining. A recent ruling of the National Labor
Relations Board withheld the collective bargaining provisions of
the Act from privately operated sheltered shops. This ruling was
handed down in the case of Sheltered Workshops of San Diego, Inc.
vs. United Association of Handicapped. By a majority decision of
three to two, the National Labor Relations Board refused to assert
jurisdiction. The ground taken was that the Workshop's purposes are
directed entirely toward rehabilitation of unemployable persons and
that its commercial activities should be viewed only as a means to
that end. The chief arguments against this ruling were forcefully
stated by the dissenting opinion of the two minority members of the
National Labor Relations Board: Why then does the majority find
that it would not effectuate the purposes of the Act to assert
jurisdiction here? It does so because the Workshop's rehabilitation
work benefits the entire community. We do not, of course, deny that
this is so, but we reject the implicit corollary that a non-profit
organization engaging in socially beneficial activities therefore
owes its employees less than other employers do. The right of
employees to select a representative and to bargain with their
employer concerning their grievances and work conditions should not
be so lightly disregarded. The majority has balanced the Workshop's
commercial activities against its rehabilitation program and has
decided that the latter outweighs the former. We would balance the
Workshop's total program, commercial and rehabilitative, against
the rights of these unfortunate and disabled employees, and would
find that the latter is equally important.

     The greatest deprivation to workers in sheltered workshops is
the exemption of these shops from the minimum wage provisions of
the Fair Labor Standards Act. With reference to the blind alone, at
least 85 of the more than 100 sheltered shops primarily employing
sightless workers hold certificates of exemption issued by the
Department of Labor under Section 214 of the Act. The average
minimum of such exemptions (1960) is 53 cents per houras opposed to
the national minimum wage of $1.00 per hour for industrial labor.
About 100 blind workers in sheltered shops receive a minimum wage
below 40 cents per hour. Given the generally acknowledged fact that
blind persons have special additional expenses incident to their
blindness, exemption from minimum wage guarantees is thus a fact of
vital significance to workers in sheltered shops.

     It is such considerations as these which have led a special
subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Meansreporting in
March of this year (1960) on the Social Security Program of
Disability Insuranceto question whether employment in sheltered
workshops should properly be regarded as substantial gainful
activity. The subcommittee concluded that wage conditions in the
shops were generally so deplorable that it should be a rare case in
which an employee of a sheltered workshop may be considered to be
engaged in substantial gainful activity and thus held ineligible
for disability insurance payments. (Administration of Social
Security Disability Program, Preliminary Report to the Committee on
Ways and Means, submitted by the Subcommittee on the Administration
of the Social Security Laws, March 11, 1960, page 22.)

     With but few exceptions, it may be said in summary, the
employees of sheltered workshops, both publicly and privately
operated, (1) do not possess the benefits of unemployment
compensation; (2) do not possess the benefits of workmen's
compensation; (3) do not possess the benefits of Old Age Survivors
and Disability Insurance under the Social Security Program; (4) the
privileges of collective bargaining under the National Labor
Relations Act are withheld from them; and (5) they are exempted
from the minimum wage guarantees of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In such circumstances of enforced poverty, insecurity, and
discriminatory withholding of privileges and denial of rights, can
it be contended that the sheltered shops rehabilitate or supply re-
munerative employment for their disabled workers?<193>

     Of the total of 389 workshops holding certificates of
exemption from minimum wage laws, 85 primarily serve blind persons.
According to the Department of Labor, there were in 1958, 4,700
blind persons employed in these shops (in 1960 the Labor Department
statement is less than 5,000) who were subject to certificates of
exemption; there were others who did earn the statutory minimum
wage, but statistics relating to them are unavailable. Fifty-seven
of these shops presently belong to the National Industries for the
Blind, which employed 3,712 blind persons in 1956. The lowest
minimum wage approved for these workers in 1958 was 10 cents an
hour, the highest minimum wage was 80 cents an hour, and the
average minimum wage 53 cents an hour. These figures represent the
lowest wage permitted in such shops. In construing the Fair Labor
Standards Act, the Department of Labor requires that every worker
on piece rates be paid the same wage paid to workers in adjacent
private industry for the same work. This is not a very valuable
standard, since much of the work done in these shops is not carried
on by any appreciable segment of private industry; and in any event
this standard is not enforced by the Labor Department.

     Conclusion

     From this survey of the statutory provisions of the states
governing their sheltered workshops, several conclusions clearly
emerge. The three distinctive functions of sheltered
shopsvocational rehabilitation, medical therapy, and remunerative
employmentare rarely distinguished in the statutes. Instead the
workshop is commonly conceived as a combination of two, or even all
three, of these functionsin effect, as an all-purpose solution to
the numerous and varied problems confronted by the blind. In what
is perhaps their most characteristic form these statutes simply
perpetuate a relic of the past: a vague combination of the
workhouse, the almshouse, the factory, and the asylum, carefully
segregated from normal competitive society and administered by a
custodial staff armed with sweeping discretionary authority. In
many cases their responsibility for the client of their services is
so broad as to appear to embrace the function of nearly all other
community agencies and groups. In the administration of moral
uplift and regeneration they assume in effect the role of the
church; in the provision of intellectual instruction they exercise
the function of the schools; in the enforcement of discipline and
the power of punishment they resemble a penal institution; and in
their emphasis upon group activities of a social, recreational, and
cultural nature they take on the characteristics of a service club
or voluntary association. Over and above these disparate if not
conflicting responsibilities, the assumption of which is surely of
doubtful propriety, the sheltered workshop typically furnishes some
form of work experience to its participants, generally for wages
and often directed toward the objective of self-support. But few
state laws differentiate adequately or clearly among the purposes
which these activities may be supposed to serve.

     On the basis of our study it is not excessive to conclude that
the sheltered workshop as it exists within the states today is a
welfare catch-all which means all things to all men, and therefore
possesses no distinctive and specific characteristic upon which all
may agree. Indeed, by their failure to distinguish among the three
separate functions available to them, the workshops of the states
must be adjudged to be failures in all three. The nature and extent
of their failure with respect to each of these functions may be
briefly stated.

     1. Vocational Rehabilitation. There are dangers and
difficulties involved in the use of sheltered workshops in any
program of rehabilitation. Most serious of all are those attending
the support of workshops within the public program of vocational
rehabilitation (Public Law 565). In their traditional, and still
perhaps their most characteristic, role as permanent employment
outlets for the disabled, the sheltered shops are incompatible with
the purposes and goals of modern vocational rehabilitation. Under
no circumstances should they be utilized as dumping grounds for
clients of vocational rehabilitation, such as the blind, for whom
normal job placement is a difficult but essential prerequisite to
proper rehabilitation. Vocational rehabilitation agencies should be
discouraged from regarding the option of sheltered employment as a
closure for their clients, however convenient such a solution may
be in terms of economy and rapid turnover of the caseload.

     Because of their customary role as sheltered (i.e.,
segregated, covered, and noncompetitive) employment retreats, the
social and psychological environment of the workshops is often not
conducive to the paramount objective of vocational rehabilitation:
that of restoring the disabled person to a vocational status of
normality and equality. Where feasible rehabilitants are thrown
together with the non-feasible, where working facilities and
methods are geared to outmoded and unproductive handicrafts such as
broom making and chair caning, and where the working atmosphere is
commonly one of defeatism if not of despair, the overriding
purposes of modern vocational rehabilitation cannot be served but
only undermined.

     Apart from psychological and social factors, the economics of
sheltered workshops equally tend to militate against their
successful adaptation, as presently constituted, to vocational
rehabilitation goals. First, they are in most cases at least
partially subsidized and so removed from the normal incentives and
competition of ordinary industry. Second, insofar as economic
considerations enter, workshop managers are tempted to retain their
ablest and most productive workers permanently rather than risk a
financial loss by graduating them into normal employment. Finally,
the economic and working conditions within sheltered shops are
commonly far below those in normal industry. The existence of such
conditions strongly argues against the public support of sheltered
workshops, under any circumstances, as training centers for
vocational rehabilitation clients.

     Finally, the historic associations of sheltered workshops with
the workhouse, almshouse, asylum, and church of the Middle Ages
have left conspicuous traces upon the majority of present-day
shops, giving them often the character of agencies for moral
redemption rather than that of means to the restoration of
productive capacities. Institutions thus motivated are unlikely to
be equally qualified or equipped in the mundane areas of vocational
guidance, training, and selective placement.

     2. Terminal Employment. With respect to the function of pro-
viding permanent (or terminal) remunerative employment for the
blind and severely disabled, sheltered workshops have failed to
fulfill their responsibility to their employees. Indeed, they have
for the most part sought to avoid the normal obligations of
employers through exemption from the laws fixing minimum standards
of employment and working con ditions. Workers in sheltered shops
deserve and require the same protection of their rights as do the
workers in other industries: specifically, with respect to wages,
hours, vacations, sick leave, labor-management relations, and the
like. However, blind workshop employees have never received, and do
not now receive, such protection. Not only do wages fail to meet
the cost of living; they fail to meet the minimum requirements of
the Fair Labor Standards Act, from which sheltered shops have in
fact been explicitly exempted. Nor can blind workshop employees
hope to improve conditions by their own efforts; for one thing,
they are not organized into unions, and for another thing (as noted
earlier) they have been denied the collective bargaining protection
of the National Labor Relations Act. Finally, many of these
employees do not have entitlement to workmen's compensation or
Social Security privileges, and most are denied the benefits of
unemployment compensation. In short, blind workers in sheltered
employment are virtually in the position of wards, without legal
rights or recourse, and reduced to an abject dependency upon the
good will and discretion of their employers. In such circumstances,
it is conservative understatement to say that sheltered workshops
have failed to meet the conditions of employment to which American
workers are entitled and accustomed.

     3. Medical Therapy. On the basis of our survey of statutory
provisions, the least plausible of all claims for sheltered
workshops is that they have provided or can provide adequate
facilities for medical and therapeutic assistance. For such
facilities to be efficient, they should be completely divorced from
considerations of remunerative employment on the one hand and of
vocational training on the other. The purposes of therapy are, of
course, not economic but medical and psychological in character.
The very cases for whom such assistance is the primary needi.e.,
the multiply and totally disabledare those incapable of
self-sufficient employment, let alone of vocational preparation for
return to normal occupations. The statutes which we have examined
plainly display the tendency of sheltered shops to become terminal
places of employment in which so-called unemployables may find a
drudge's niche at the workbench. It goes without saying that
something more than the stereotyped blind trades of weaving and
chair caning is required to serve a genuine therapeutic purpose and
furnish healthy incentives to personal adjustment. The clinging
heritage of the almshouse and asylum, into which the supposed
derelicts of society were dumped and forgotten, remains
sufficiently in evidence in present-day workshops to vitiate the
prospect of their constructive uses for medical and therapeutic
purposes. What the severely disabled clients of such services most
clearly and urgently need is a form of productive endeavor
carefully adjusted to their unique individual circumstances and in-
dividually designed to make constructive use of their enforced
leisure. Such a therapeutic enterprise must be in the fullest sense
client-centered rather than geared to industrial markets, economic
consideration, or the convenience of traditional trades and
handicrafts.

     This is not to say, of course, that the three separate
functions which sheltered workshops have purported to servethose of
vocational rehabilitation, of employment, and of therapyhave no
place in modern programs of health and welfare. For the blind and
other disabled persons in the productive years of life, vocational
rehabilitation is the essential and overriding need; but its
purposes of occupational guidance, training, and com petitive job
placement cannot be met by the sheltered workshop. If, either
within or outside the vocational rehabilitation process, there is
need for vocational adjustment or therapeutic centers, that need
should be met not by the sheltered shop but by special
rehabilitation facilities such as those authorized by Public Law
565 (where they are carefully distinguished from workshops).
Rehabilitation facility, the law states, means a facility operated
for the primary purpose of assisting in the rehabilitation of
disabled persons(1) which provides one or more of the following
types of services: (A) testing, fitting, or training in the use of
prosthetic devices; (B) prevocational or conditioning therapy; (C)
physical or occupational therapy; (D) adjustment training; or (E)
evaluation or control of special disabilities; or (2) through which
is provided an integrated program of medical, psychological,
social, and vocational evaluation and services under competent
professional supervision.<193> Finally, there is no doubt that a
genuine need exists for permanent noncompetitive employment of
certain categories of the severely handicapped, but that need also
(as we have seen above) is not met by sheltered workshops of the
type described by the governing statutes of the states.

     In summary, the fundamental failure of sheltered workshops for
the blind and disabled lies in their indiscriminate intermingling
of functions and purposes which are demonstrably incompatible if
not mutually exclusive. It is not too much to conclude, on the
basis of the statutory evidence, that the sheltered workshop has
become an anachronism which America, if it is to practice
successfully the democratic welfare philosophy it professes, can
ill afford to perpetuate.

                          Gimme Shelter

     There is an irony in the history of the sheltered workshops
that is illustrated by the operative term sheltered. Originally it
was the employment itself, reserved for the blind or disabled, that
was sheltered from competition by the able-bodied; in that sense,
for an earlier era in which the blind as a class were regarded as
unemployable, the concept of a work shelter could appear as
positive and constructive. In those protected and segregated shops
the blind were given work to do (however menial); they were taught
a trade (however trivial); they were paid a wage (however
marginal); and they were rescued from the vice of idleness. In the
Depression decade of the 1930s, when the original legislation now
known as the Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act was passed, that must have
seemed a substantial step forward for the blind. The new law
sheltered them from competition in the setting of the workshop; but
it was not only the blind workers who were sheltered by the lawit
was the enterprise itself. The Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act provided a
shelter for the workshop industry and its management from the harsh
reality of the minimum wage. The shops were legislatively gifted
with the windfall of a wage sheltersomething even better than a tax
shelterexempting them from the requirements of all other federal
laws governing wages and hours, working conditions, and fair labor
standards. In their special field of employment, with regard to
their own pool of workers, the sheltered shops were able at a
stroke to repeal half a century of humanitarian reforms on the part
of organized labor and the federal government. Everywhere else
laboring men and womenlet alone childrenwere legislatively
protected from exploitation in the workplace; everywhere else
workers had acquired a legal shelter. But not here. In the
sheltered workshop alone the blind workers were unsheltered.

     It was a principal goal of the organized blind movement,
virtually from the beginning, to change all that: to reform the
sheltered workshops, enforce the minimum wage, and generally defend
blind shopworkers from exploitation and harassment. During the
first decade of the Federation, to be sure, the plight of the
sheltered broom maker and basket weaver seemed less critical to the
movement's leaders than the predicament of other blind people who
had no work at all and no security other than that which the
Federation itself was gradually carving out of the nearly
impervious hide of government. But in the second decade of the
Federation, the fiftieslargely through the efforts of the organized
blind themselvesthe new issues of opportunity, competitive jobs,
and new careers were taking precedence over the problems of
security and subsistence on the agenda of Federationists. In this
altered context the sheltered workshops took on a role not of
diminished but of greater prominence; now the issue was one of
worker rights, of the minimum wage, and of vocational
rehabilitationchanges which would move workers out of the shelters
and into the mainstream.

                 Unionizing and the Minimum Wage

     During the fifties and sixties the Federation became actively
involved in defending the rights of blind shop workers to organize
collectively, to express grievances, and to seek a living wage.
These efforts led to the establishment in 1971 of a Sheltered
Workshop Division within the National Federation of the Blind.

     The struggle of the organized blind to reform the sheltered
workshops was fought out through the years not only in the press
and in the workplace but also in the courts. In the late 1970s and
early eighties the Federation brought before the National Labor
Relations Board a series of cases involving the right of blind shop
workers to organize. The earlier opinions of the Board that the
blind were not really employees at all but only rehabilitation
clients were now repudiated; in each instance the NLRB affirmed the
right of blind workers to join unions and bargain collectively.
Several of these cases were appealed by the shop management to the
courts. In both the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Sixth
Circuit Court of Appeals, the right to organize was upheld.
However, the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit refused to
follow the recommendation of the labor board; instead, it held that
the blind inmates of the sheltered shops, whatever in fact they
were, could not be regarded as employees.

     The first of the workshop cases which the Federation took to
the NLRB was the one involving the Chicago Lighthouse for the
Blind. This was in 1975, and it was to be a nasty fight. Federation
leader James Omvig (a blind attorney uniquely suited to the task,
being both a former shopworker at the Chicago Lighthouse and a
former hearing officer for the National Labor Relations Board)
played an important role in shaping the Federation's long drive to
win collective bargaining rights for the blind in sheltered
workshops. He served as an officer in the Sheltered Workshop
Division; he contacted workers in the shops and did organizing; and
he wrote the brief in the Chicago Lighthouse casea pivotal document
which resulted on June 28, 1976, in the reversal by the National
Labor Relations Board of its long-standing policy not to take
jurisdiction over the nation's sheltered workshops.

     In an address delivered at the National Warehouse Conference
of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Toronto, Canada,
on August 15, 1978, Kenneth Jernigan summed up the situation in
Chicago and a number of other workshops. Here, in part, is what he
said:

     I am here today to tell you something about our organization.
More particularly, I am here because you the Teamsters have helped
us start on the road to organize the workers in the so-called
sheltered shops for the blind. Let me tell you something about
these shops. In the first place most blind persons could work in
regular business and industry on equal terms with others (just as
productive and just as competitive) if they had the training and
the opportunity. But they don't, so they work in the sheltered
shops.

     Some of these shops are run by state government. Many of them
are private organizations set up by a few prominent citizens in the
community, who get publicity and satisfaction from serving on the
board and having their names connected with a worthwhile cause but
who really know very little about what goes on in the day-to-day
operation. The real control is usually exercised by the paid
(highly paid) director and other management staff.

     The managers of the workshops have had a good thing of it.
They have had prestige and respect in the community; they have
raised money in the name of helping the blind; and very few
questions have been asked, because it has been thought they were
doing such noble work in helping unfortunate people. They have told
the Congress that the blind are not capable of real productivity,
and so they have been permitted to pay less than the minimum wage
(sometimes as little as fifty cents an hour) on the theory that the
activity in the shops is not actually real work as much as it is
therapy, that it is rehabilitation training to prepare the workers
to go into competitive employment, and that the shops will go broke
(have you heard that before?) if they pay the workers decent wages
and fringe benefits. Yet, they have enough money to pay salaries
often running to more than $50,000 a year to their top management.
They can afford fancy offices, a lot of travel to conferences in
expensive hotels, and a very thorough package of fringe benefits
for supervisors and other professional staff. Blind workers can be
laid off or fired at will; and they often have no sick leave, no
vacation, and no say about working conditions.

     The songs people sing tell a great deal about their lives. In
the National Federation of the Blind we have several songs about
sheltered shops. One of these is sung to the tune of the religious
song Bringing in the Sheaves, but it is titled Bringing in the
Thieves. The chorus goes like this:

     Bringing in the thieves, Bringing in the thieves, The
workshops come rejoicing, Bringing in the thieves.

     As you might imagine, the thieves to which the reference is
made are not the workers. Another song is done to the tune of I've
Been Workin' on the Railroad. It is called I've Been Workin' in the
Workshop, and goes like this:

     I've been workin' in the workshop, All the livelong day, And
with the wages that they pay me, It's just to pass my time away.

     In 1960 the blind workers in the San Diego shop asked the
National Labor Relations Board to order an election to permit them
to unionize. In a three-to-two split decision the Board refused to
take jurisdiction, having been propagandized by management into
believing that the prime purpose of the shop was rehabilitative in
nature and, therefore, that the blind workers did not need the same
rights and protections enjoyed by other Americans in the work
force. It was 1976 before we could get this decision reversed. That
was the Chicago Lighthouse case. And it was 1978 before we really
locked it up. That was when you the Teamsters helped us organize
the Cincinnati Association for the Blind.

     Since they are either governmental or nonprofit organizations,
the workshops pay no taxes. They receive heavy subsidies from the
government, and they receive donations from the general public.
Federal legislation requires government agencies to buy products
from the shops. I am not complaining about all of this. I am only
saying that if it is going to happen, I don't want all of the pie
to go to management. I want the workers to have a few bites, too.

     The workshops have traditionally made brooms, mops, and
mattresses. More recently they have received large government
contracts to produce a wide variety of items and have subcontracted
with private industry.

     The Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind operates a sheltered
shop. When the workers began to try to organize in 1975, blind
persons were being paid less than the minimum wage, and working
conditions were badno job protection, no rights, and no collective
bargaining. Seventy to eighty percent of all workshop contracts
were with the Skilcraft Corporation. Skilcraft had no assembly and
packaging employees of its own. All assembly and packaging were
done by blind employees of the Lighthouse in Skilcraft's own
building. None of the individuals was paid the federal minimum
wage, and there were no fringe benefits whatsoever. Therefore, in
truth and in fact these blind people were employees of Skilcraft,
and the Chicago Lighthouse was nothing more than a front for an
employer who wanted cheap labor. The workers were not much better
off than slaves.

     The Chicago Lighthouse tried to explain it by saying that the
blind were not employees but were clients, who were in the process
of being rehabilitated and trained for outside competitive
employment. It was a mighty long period of training. Some of these
so-called clients had worked for the Lighthouse for from ten to
fifteen years. So the Lighthouse had (and for all I know, still
has) two classes of workers: one group (all blind) called clients,
and the other group (mostly sighted) called employees. As the
National Federation of the Blind said in its brief to the National
Labor Relations Board in 1976, Those called `employees' receive
paid vacations, sick leave, paid holidays, personal leave days,
hospitalization insurance, life insurance, pension benefits,
workmen's compensation benefits, and unemployment insurance; those
called `clients' do not.

     In all other respects, our brief said, employees and `clients'
receive equal treatment. They are supervised, punch a time clock,
work eight-hour days, and observe all of the employer's policies.
For instance, the employer has a policy that if an individual is
sick for more than two days, he must produce a verifying doctor's
statement upon his return to work. Astounding as it may be, the
worker who is characterized as a `client' must follow this policy
even though he receives no pay for his time off from work. He must
spend his own money in order to get the doctor's statement.

     The National Labor Relations Board ordered an election at the
Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind in the summer of 1976. Before the
election was held, the principal worker engaged in organizing was
fired. We lost the election. Shortly afterward, three more leaders
of the effort to organize were fired.

     The blind of the nation collected what money they could to
help feed those fired workers. We are now trying to organize again
at the Chicago Lighthouse, and another leading organizer has been
fired. We will share what we have with him. To the extent that we
have it or can get it, we will see that he has money for food and
clothes.

     In Massachusetts a few days ago there was a transit strike.
State employees were paid for the day on the theory that they could
not get to work. Blind workers at the state workshop (also state
employees) were not paid for the daypresumably on the theory that
they couldn't do anything about it. The Massachusetts workshop is
considering a list of factors on which to evaluate its workers.
Some of the factors are these: reaction to criticism, reaction to
praise, reaction to authority, reaction to co-workers, acceptance
of responsibility, posture, sound localization, sense of humor,
independent action, worker self-concept, social conduct,
motivation, dependability, initiative, work quality, and work
quantity. There are other factors on the list, but I think I have
given you enough to make the point. The only two things on that
list that really ought to be given very much weight are the
quantity and the quality of the work the employee does. I am
particularly struck by management's intention to evaluate the blind
workers on their sense of humor. It's a bad joke. With conditions
what they are in the sheltered shop there's not a whole lot to
laugh about.

     We have a job to do in Massachusetts; and, again, I hope and
believe that you will be at our side. You were with us in
Cincinnati a few weeks ago when the shopworkers voted to be
represented by the Teamsters. I am told that some of the workers in
the Cincinnati shop make 58 cents an hour while the director of the
organization makes upwards of $50,000 a year. I look forward to the
contract talks, and I suspect you do, too.

     Chicago was to be a turning point, for armed with the NLRB
decision that blind shop workers had the right to organize, the
Federation intensified its campaign in shops throughout the
country. The Cincinnati Association for the Blind and the Houston
Lighthouse for the Blind were organizedand this time the elections
were not lost, and the workers were not fired. But the road was
long and tortuous. The drama of the situation and the intensity of
the struggle can be seen in an article in the December, 1979,
Braille Monitor:

     TWIN VICTORIES FOR THE BLIND IN SHELTERED WORKSHOPS: THE
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD RULES IN OUR FAVOR AGAIN OVER THE
PROTESTS OF THE AFB, NAC, ACB, ALL, AND NIB COMBINE

     The battle being waged by the blind to secure a firm and
universal recognition of the fundamental right of blind shop
workers to organize and bargain collectively with management
through labor unions has in recent years moved to center stage,
occupying the spotlight as a central issue which divides those of
us who are working to rise from second-class status in society from
those at the center of power in the traditional agency structure
who desperately want to continue to exercise control over us as
inferiors. The decisions by the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) over the past three and one-half years; increased attention
by the Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor to our calls for
minimum wage; the investigations of state officials (especially the
audits and legislative reports issued on the workshops in New York
State); and the exposes by investigative reporters for the Wall
Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, and the CBS television
program 60 Minutes have forced the agency overlords to defend their
conduct in a public arena where it is increasingly unacceptable to
hide behind the cloak of professionalism and all-knowing expertise.

     Now on the heels of these other events comes perhaps the most
dramatic and significant single breakthrough to date: two landmark
rulings by the NLRB which in the immediate sense affect the workers
at both the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and the Houston
Lighthouse for the Blind, but in the long run will bring profound
and lasting changes in the entire workshop system and in the
relationship between the blind (especially the organized blind) and
the agencies which have been set up to serve them. The latest
decisions and orders were handed down by the Labor Board on
September 18; they were direct and unequivocal, the basic right of
blind sheltered shop workers to form a collective bargaining unit
and to designate a labor union to represent them has been upheld in
the face of the strongest and best financed opposition possible.
There is no question about it now; there is no qualification or
wiggling. The NLRB has now taken final and positive action with
respect to the Cincinnati Association for the Blind, and the
Houston Lighthouse is not far behind.

     In the Braille Monitor for August-September, 1978, we
described the organizing campaign at the Cincinnati Association for
the Blind and underscored the significance of the victory which was
achieved when, on June 7, 1978, the 79 workers at the Cincinnati
Association who were eligible to vote in the union representation
election determined, by a vote of 44 to 35, that they would be
represented by Local No. 100 of the Truck Drivers, Chauffeurs, and
Helpers Union, affiliated with the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen, and Helpers of America. On
June 15, 1978, the Regional Director of the NLRB certified the
election of Teamster's Local 100 as the exclusive representative of
the employees (including those which are often referred to as
clients) at the Cincinnati Association. This was a truly historic
event, the strongest affirmation ever of the right of the blind to
organize and bargain collectively, but little did most of us know
that the toughest battle had just begun.

     The first indications that we were still in for a long, hard
fight came during the summer of 1978 when the Teamsters contacted
the Cincinnati Association to initiate the collective bargaining
process. Several good-faith attempts were made to bring the Asso-
ciation to the bargaining table, but to no availrulings of the NLRB
seemed to make no difference, the Cincinnati Association would not
negotiate a contract. We are well accustomed to hearing the agency
overlords speak of themselves and their expertise in the loftiest
of terms usually reserved only for the highest ministers of state,
so we were not overly astonished when Milton Jahoda, executive
director of the Cincinnati Association, refused to comply with
federal labor law by failing to recognize a duly authorized and
officially certified collective bargaining unit representing his
workers. By late August it became clear to all of us, and to
officials of the NLRB as well, that the Cincinnati Association
would not bargain with the blind through the Teamsters Union unless
forced to do so by an authority higher than the Labor Board,
perhaps a Federal Court.

     On August 31, 1978, the General Counsel of the NLRB commenced
the actions necessary to compel the Cincinnati Association to come
to the bargaining table and negotiate an agreement with the workers
through the Union. This action took the form of an unfair labor
practice charge leveled against the Cincinnati Association by the
General Counsel of the NLRB and filed with the Board itself for a
determination. The Association, as expected, denied the charge,
arguing that there were no valid grounds for the Labor Board to
order a union election in the first place, so now that a union had
been voted in it should not have to comply with the demands for
collective bargaining. This amounted to a full-blown appeal of the
Labor Board's original decision handed down in May of 1978 ordering
the election for union representation.

     That the case of the Cincinnati Association goes far beyond
the confines of that single workshop is (or ought to be) readily
apparent, but in case there are any doubts, consider what happened
next in the proceedings before the NLRBenter, National In-dustries
for the Blind (NIB), intervener, defending the actions of
Respondent, Cincinnati Association for the Blind, and calling for
repudiation of the Labor Board's original decision in the
Cincinnati Case. NIB is the well-financed and federally designated
coordinating agency responsible for allocating federal government
and other contracts to its affiliated workshops throughout the
country, and in turn (for its services) NIB receives a percentage
(four percent for most non-military, and ten percent for most
military, contracts) of the gross sales under these contracts.
During the fiscal year ending September 30, 1978, there were gross
sales in the NIB system exceeding $120,000,000. Many of NIB's exec-
utives are former military top brass, retired on taxpayer-funded
pensions. At last report, in the spring of 1979, the organization
had no blind employees in a work force of approximately 60. Total
salaries and pension contributions in the year ended June, 1977,
exceeded $1 million, and you can be sure that no one on NIB's staff
earns less than minimum wage.

     NIB, then, is an organization which primarily coordinates
workshop contracting; hence virtually its only source of revenue is
the percentage it receives on each contract, which, in turn, is
paid for out of the proceeds generated by production activity in
the workshops, all of which means that the blind who work in the
workshops (many on less than minimum wage) contribute substantially
toward paying the salaries of NIB's well compensated executives,
many of whom also dip into the federal coffers for their not so
meager military retirement pensions. But this is only part of the
financial arrangementit also follows that since NIB's income is
primarily generated by the productivity of the blind workers in the
workshops, any actions which NIB takes, such as intervening on
behalf of the Cincinnati Association for the Blind before the NLRB,
will be financed by the sweat from the blind workers' brows as
well. And so this is how it is with NIB. The blind workers should
be proudyou never go second-class when you go with NIB, unless, of
course, you are the one who is really doing the work to bring home
the money to pay the bills; but even so, the blind workers will be
proud to know that through their collective efforts they managed to
provide NIB with enough income to hire what is generally regarded
as the most prestigious (and the most expensive) law firm in
Washington, D.C. (the firm of Covington and Burling), to argue the
NIB case against the blind before the Labor Board.

     In terms of the longer view, the appeal by the Cincinnati
Association for the Blind, backed by the NIB with its historic and
continuing ties to the rest of the AFB, NAC, ACB, and ALL combine,
has to be seen as just one more in a series of preplanned tactics
to break the back of the Union by disregarding the will of the
blind as expressed by their democratic vote. There was really no
substantive issue left for the NLRB to decide, and the Cincinnati
Association knew this, but perhaps it was the feeling that, with
the money of NIB and the prestige of its high-priced law firm, the
original decision just might be overturned, and even if it was not,
look what could be gained; another year of paying less than minimum
wage, another year with few or no benefits for the workers, another
year with no show-up pay, and another year without having to
bargain with the Labor Union.

     So the appeal went forward at the Labor Board, and along the
way the Federation intervened on behalf of the blind and the local
Teamsters Union; briefs were filed; the months went by, while the
workers inside the workshop did their best to keep their spirits
and their hopes up with the encouragement of NFB leaders and
members from throughout the country. Then, on September 18, the
waiting was overthe decision was issuedwe had come face-to-face
with the power and the money of the agencies, and we had won again.
The decision which came down is an important one, for it
establishes more firmly than ever before our right to organize and
bargain collectively and finds that, by blocking the exercise of
this right by the blind workers in Cincinnati, the Cincinnati
Association for the Blind is guilty of unfair labor practices which
are prohibited by the National Labor Relations Act. Better yet, the
Association is now ordered by the Labor Board to cease and desist
from further committing these unfair labor practices and to
initiate collective bargaining with its employees through the
Teamsters Union. The decision and order by the Board reads in part
as follows (references to the Act mean the National Labor Relations
Act, as amended):

     Conclusions of Law

1. Cincinnati Association for the Blind is an employer engaged in
commerce within the meaning of Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act.

2. Truck Drivers, Chauffeurs, and Helpers Local Union No. 100,
affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
Chauffeurs, Warehousemen, and Helpers of America, is a labor
organization within the meaning of Section 2(5) of the Act.

3. All production and maintenance employees and clients, including
shipping and receiving employees, of Respondent's workshop located
at 2045 Gilbert Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio, excluding office clerical
employees, professional employees, guards and supervisors as
defined in the Act, constitute a unit appropriate for the purposes
of collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(b) of the
Act.

4. Since June 15, 1978, the above-named labor organization has been
and now is the certified and exclusive representative of all
employees in the aforesaid appropriate unit for the purpose of
collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(a) of the
Act.

5. By refusing on or about August 25, 1978, and at all times
thereafter, to bargain collectively with the above- named labor
organization as the exclusive bargaining representative of all the
employees of Respondent in the appropriate unit, Respondent has
engaged in and is engaging in unfair labor practices within the
meaning of Section 8(a)(5) of the Act.

6. By the aforesaid refusal to bargain, Respondent has interfered
with, restrained, and coerced, and is interfering with, re-
straining, and coercing, employees in the exercise of the rights
guaranteed them in Section 7 of the Act, and thereby has engaged in
and is engaging in unfair labor practices within the meaning of
Section 8(a)(l) of the Act.

7. The aforesaid unfair labor practices are unfair labor practices
affecting commerce within the meaning of Section 2(6) and (7) of
the Act.

     ORDER

Pursuant to Section 10(c) of the National Labor Relations Act, as
amended, the National Labor Relations Board hereby orders that the
Respondent, Cincinnati Association for the Blind, Cincinnati, Ohio,
its officers, agents, successors, and assigns, shall:

     1. Cease and desist from:

     (a) Refusing to bargain collectively concerning rates of pay,
wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment with
Truck Drivers, Chauffeurs, and Helpers Local Union No. 100,
affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,
Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, as the exclusive
bargaining representative of its employees.

     (b) In any like or related manner interfering with,
restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of the rights
guaranteed them in Section 7 of the Act.

     2. Take the following affirmative action which the Board finds
will effectuate the policies of the Act:

     (a) Upon request, bargain with the above-named labor
organization as the exclusive representative of all employees in
the aforesaid appropriate unit with respect to rates of pay, wages,
hours, and other terms and conditions of employment, and, if an un-
derstanding is reached, embody such understanding in a signed
agreement.

     (b) Post at 2045 Gilbert Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio, copies of
the attached notice marked Appendix. Copies of said notice, on
forms provided by the Regional Director for Region 9, after being
duly signed by Respondent's representative, shall be posted by
Respondent immediately upon receipt thereof, and be maintained by
it for 60 consecutive days thereafter, in conspicuous places,
including all places where notices to employees are customarily
posted. Reasonable steps shall be taken by Respondent to insure
that said notices are not altered, defaced, or covered by any other
material.

     (c) Notify the Regional Director for Region 9, in writing,
within 20 days from the date of this Order, what steps have been
taken to comply herewith.

     Dated, Washington, D.C., September 18, 1979

     By any standard this is a resounding victory and one which has
not been handed to us on a silver platter. There have been ex-
pensive legal bills together with much ground-work and educating of
the Teamsters, and Federationists and their friends by the
thousands have all had a part in bringing this great day about. Of
course, it goes without saying that the battle continues; orders of
the National Labor Relations Board are not self-enforcing, and you
can be sure that the Cincinnati Association, having firmly
established its course of non-negotiation will not willingly
retreat. The notice referred to as an Appendix to the Labor Board's
Order amounts to an affirmation that the Cincinnati Association
will recognize its obligation to come to the bargaining table and
enter into an agreement with its workers, but as expected, the
Association refuses to sign or post the notice and has instead
filed a petition with the Federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit, asking to have the decision and order of the NLRB reviewed
and set aside.

     Thus the battle in Cincinnati now moves from the National
Labor Relations Board to the Federal Courts. More time will be
taken; there will be more delays; more briefs, oral arguments will
be scheduled, and the months will go by while the blind workers
inside the workshop at the Cincinnati Association will try to keep
their spirits up, hoping for a swift and satisfactory conclusion of
the next steps in this series of classic maneuvers to establish the
right to organize and bargain collectively. As the months spread
before us all, the strength and resolve of all Federationists will
be needed to see the battle in Cincinnati through to its ultimate
conclusion. Our energy, our time, our strong and confident voice,
along with especially our money and our collective will must be
available as never before. Yes, the battle grows long in
Cincinnati, but even so, all blind people have more dignity and a
better status in society today because of it.

     Meanwhile at the Houston Lighthouse, events, similar to those
which had occurred before the election for Union representation in
Cincinnati, were taking place. In the Braille Monitor for April,
1979, we reported the decision of the Regional Director for the
National Labor Relations Board in Houston who, exercising his own
authority, ordered an election at the Houston Lighthouse. The
Lighthouse, as we reported in April, appealed to the National Board
in Washington, and the Board decided that it would review the
Regional Director's decision, while temporarily upholding the order
for an election and impounding the ballot box pending the outcome
of the review.

     In a way, while it was somewhat disappointing (and certainly
served to delay matters) for the full Board to review the Regional
Director's decision, the fact that the original decision was made
at all at the Regional level was heartening for it shows that a
clearer precedent has been established as the result of Cincinnati
and the earlier case in Chicago. In both Cincinnati and Chicago it
will be remembered that the NLRB Regional Directors declined to
rule on the petitions for election, passing the cases along for
full Board action in Washington. Now, with the Labor Board's firm
orders in Cincinnati and Houston, we can expect more decisive and
positive action at the Regional level as future cases are brought
to the NLRB.

     Again, in Houston, the months went by as attorneys for the
respective parties and our attorneys (the Federation had been ad-
mitted into the case as an intervener) filed their briefs and made
their arguments. Not surprisingly, the issues were identical to
those in the Cincinnati case: Are blind workers to be considered
employees under the National Labor Relations Act? Is the
Light-house substantially engaged in business activity and
commercial enterprise? Would it effectuate the purposes of the
National Labor Relations Act for the Labor Board to assert
jurisdiction? The Board had already decided the Cincinnati Case in
1978 on these and related questions, so it now remained to
determine whether Houston was similar enough to invoke the
Cincinnati precedent. The Board determined that it was. The
decision on review reads in part (the employer referred to in the
decision is the Houston Lighthouse for the Blind):

     The fifth department within the Employer's operations is the
Industrial Division which is the one involved herein. This division
generates almost 90 percent of the Employer's annual revenues. The
Industrial Division produces felt-tipped pens, mops, and commercial
scrub brushes; bottles disinfectants and detergents; and performs
subcontracting work. In 1977 the Industrial Division manufactured
40,539,744 felt-tipped pens, 250,000 mops, and 300,000 brushes. In
addition it produced 145,000 gallons of disinfectant and 30,000
gallons of detergents. Items such as the mops and brushes
manufactured by Workshop A of the Industrial Division are sold in
market outlets in Harris County and Houston, Texas. Pursuant to
contracts with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), many
of the felt-tipped pens, as well as the detergent and the
disinfectant, are supplied to the Federal government. The
Industrial Division also performs subcontracting work including,
inter alia, assembling fishing rod holders, performing grease check
assembly work, and filling notebook binders with inserts for
various companies.

     In 1977 the Industrial Division generated $4,620,000 worth of
revenue from sales of the merchandise described above. These
revenues netted a profit of $237,000 for the Employer which was
utilized in other areas of its operations. The Employer's total
revenue income in 1977 was $5,195,000 which included, in addition
to the revenue from the Industrial Division, fees from state
programs, donations from the United Fund, grants, contributions,
and other donations. Expenditures by the Employer in 1977 included
$3,631,000 for materials and goods, $752,000 for labor costs and
other industrial operations, $644,000 for rehabilitation, and
$123,000 for general administrative expenses. The balance of these
totals reveals that the Employer netted a profit of $45,000.

     The Employer also contends that the Board should decline
jurisdiction on discretionary grounds. In this regard, the Employer
maintains that its commercial activity is merely ancillary to its
purpose of providing rehabilitation to handicapped persons and that
the impact of the Employer's operations on interstate commerce is
not sufficient to warrant the Board's assertion of jurisdiction. We
do not agree.

     Although the Employer contends that but for the grants from
charities such as the United Way and moneys received from the
Federal Government for experimental purposes, it would have lost
$244,000 in 1977, the record amply demonstrates the impact and
nature of the Employer's industrial operations with respect to
commerce. Thus, as noted above, the Employer enters into contracts
with the General Services Administration of the United States
Government as well as other employers in the Houston area to
manufacture and distribute products. The Employer's merchandising
sales from its Industrial Division accounted for approximately 88.5
percent of the total revenues received by the Employer in 1977. A
similar percentage was expended toward the operations of the In-
dustrial Division. The production figures noted above, including
the manufacture of 40 million pens and various other items, in-
dicates to us that, contrary to its assertions, the Employer's
substantial production and distribution of items by its Industrial
Division attest to the commercial nature of the Employer's
operations. Further, it is clear that the Employer endeavors to
increase its manufacturing output, broaden its markets, and
essentially operates as would a private employer. For these reasons
we find no basis for exercising our discretion to decline
jurisdiction, but rather conclude that it will effectuate the
purposes of the Act to assert jurisdiction over the Employer.

     II.

     The Employer further contends that its handicapped workers in
Workshop A, who are the subject of the instant petition, are not
employees within the meaning of Section 2(3) of the Act. The
Employer argues that the relationship between the Employer and its
clients is one of rehabilitation. Both the Petitioner and the
Federation assert that the persons in the petitioned-for unit are
statutory employees and that the Employer's operations are
commercial in nature.

     The record in the instant case shows that the Employer
operates Workshop A under normal business conditions and that Work-
shop A employees are treated essentially as are regular employees
in the private sector. Employees in Workshop A are paid at least
the minimum wage, the range being from $2.89 to $3.40 per hour
based on performance. These employees are paid overtime rates when
working more than 8 hours a day. Moreover, they are eligible to
receive merit raises based on productivity, and these merit raises
are subject to rescission if the employee does not demonstrate that
this productivity can be sustained at that level. Employees in
Workshop A receive a retirement program, vacations, and health
benefits. They are covered under workmen's compensation and
unemployment compensation. They punch a timeclock. They have nine
paid holidays per year. Social Security deductions are made from
their paychecks. While the Employer maintains that its relationship
to a person in Workshop A is one primarily of rehabilitation, the
record shows, for example, that with respect to discipline the
Employer resolves these problems using normal economic and business
considerations. Thus, there is undisputed evidence that employees
have been terminated and suspended for, among other things,
fighting, insubordination, low production, refusal to work,
excessive tardiness, and excessive absenteeism. Moreover, although
the Employer attempts to place employees in private industry, the
record shows that many of these employees returned to the
Industrial Division Workshop A. We also note that a large propor-
tion of the employee complement of Workshop A has worked for
Employer for at least 10 years and some for as many as 20 years.

     These facts lead us to agree with the observation of one of
the Employer's witnesses at the hearing in this case that the
Industrial Division operates like any manufacturing operation. It
is clear from these facts and the facts as recited by the Regional
Director that the Employer's relationship with its Workshop A
clients is guided to a great extent by business considerations. We
therefore conclude that the employees in Workshop A of the Em-
ployer's Industrial Division are employees within the meaning of
Section 2(3) of the Act. Accordingly, we affirm the Regional
Director's Decision and Direction of Election and direct that the
ballots which had been impounded be opened and counted by the
Regional Director and that thereafter he take such further
appropriate action as required by Section 102.69 of the Board's
Rules and Regulations, Series 8, as amended.

     Dated, Washington, D.C., September 18, 1979

     On September 24, pursuant to the Board's order, the ballots
cast by the workers at the Houston Lighthouse were opened by the
Regional Director of the NLRB, and, by an affirmative vote of 47 to
17, they became the second group of sheltered shop employees to
designate a labor union (once again the Teamsters) to represent
them for purposes of collective bargaining. At this writing, in
late September, the process of officially certifying the union's
election is going forward, and you can be sure that there will be
as many appeals as possible until the matter, as in the case of
Cincinnati, reaches the Federal Courts.

     We have traveled a very long road from the days when the right
to organize and bargain collectively was a dream and a hope
expressed in our resolutions and public statements to the point
where this right is now recognized by the National Labor Relations
Board, but this is where the latest rulings by the NLRB have placed
us. No one should think that the battle is over, however, for there
will be many more delays, more appeals, more briefs, and more
rulings. The course of the future is clear, though, and we are
firmly resolved to follow it through. In doing so we confront
money, prestige, and all the power of the traditional agency
establishment in work with the blind, because one thing it cannot
tolerate is recognizing the essential right which blind people have
to speak, think, and act for themselves through their chosen
representatives, whether the representative selected is a Labor
Union or the National Federation of the Blind.

     In a very real sense, this is the most significant message
transmitted by the most recent events in the battle to bring orga-
nized labor into the sheltered workshops. We have often said that
they do not want us to speak for ourselves, and if there was ever
need for proof of this truism, here it is in the cases of Houston
and Cincinnati. The field of work with the blind is full of people
who are determined to carve out our destiny for us, and they firmly
intend to do it, using any tactic which they can find, never mind
considerations of right and wrong, morality, or even matters of
legality.

     One almost wonders, with the rulings of the National Labor
Relations Board, if the agency overlords will now begin to say that
the members of the Board are surely bad and corrupt people,
probably as bad and corrupt, they will likely say, as that dogmatic
and abrasive National Federation of the Blind and its irrational
President, Kenneth Jernigan. Perhaps the members of the Board will
become the subject of personal attack and abuse in the pages of the
Des Moines Register. Likely as not Chairman Fanning (chairman of
the National Labor Relations Board) will be charged with
megalomania. How dare him order a workshop for the blind to listen
and respond to the blind people; shame, shame. And who can tell,
maybe, just maybe, the Register will discover that the windows of
the building occupied by the NLRB in Washington are made of a mys-
terious substance known as Lexan.

     No question about it, the recent developments on the workshop
organizing front must be seen in the context of the broader
struggle of the blind to achieve equality and first-class status in
the face of the stubborn and often mulish resistance of the very
agencies which some might say practice fraud upon the general
public by holding themselves out as the helpers of the blind while
actually subjecting the blind to the worst forms of slavery ever
known. And it is significant, as in the case of the minorities who
have gone before us, that we have only ourselves to count on for
support and strength.

     There is much to be said about this; we have often asked,
where is the American Council of the Blind, and the inevitable
answer comes back: Down in the barnyard with the agencies, slinging
mud at the blind who have the nerve to stand up and make decisions
for themselves. And what about this outfit called ALL (the
Affiliated Leadership League of and for the Blind)? It purports to
work on behalf of all those of and for the blind. Where was it when
the Labor Board ruled? Nowhere to be found; ALL gone, if you will.

     But we know where we were, we were on the barricades in
Cincinnati, and we were fighting in the trenches in Houston. This
we did, and this we must continue to do. The twin victories of
Cincinnati and Houston have opened up vast new possibilities for
the blind who work in other workshops throughout this country, and
for all of us they have provided a new sense of personal dignity
and a resounding affirmation of the absolute necessity to maintain
a strong and truly independent organized blind movement through the
National Federation of the Blind. It is one more answer to the
question Why the National Federation of the Blind. It is another
way of underlying our battle cry of recent years (a battle cry
which is not a necessary slogan but a way of life and a statement
of faithin ourselves, in society, and in the future). The battle
cry is increasingly repeated and increasingly understood: We know
who we are, and we will never go back.

     The early and mid-1980s were to see a series of skirmishes and
battles between the blind and the workshops throughout the country.
In Cincinnati and Houston shop management appealed to the courts,
and both of them ultimately lost. The Cincinnati administrators
sought to have the United States Supreme Court review their case,
but the court declined. Unions were established in Cincinnati and
Houston, and efforts were made in North Carolina, Arkansas, and
elsewhere. In Arkansas the vote to unionize the Lighthouse for the
Blind was lost in the heat of a furious conflict, but the National
Labor Relations Board ruled that there had been such flagrant abuse
and so many unfair labor practices that a union should be
established despite the election. Management then appealed to the
Eighth Circuit Court, and contrary to the rulings of both the Fifth
and Sixth Circuits, the Eighth Circuit ruled in favor of the shop
in 1988.

     In 1986 Congress, at the urging of the National Federation of
the Blind, amended the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was a landmark
amendment. From the beginning the blind employees of sheltered
shops had been excluded from the minimum-wage provisions of the
act; and those who believed they were being paid unfairly had no
effective way of protesting. The 1986 amendments changed all that;
no longer were blind workers powerless to seek justice and secure
their rights. The full significance of the legal change, and its
consequences for blind workers, were spelled out in an article by
Kenneth Jernigan appearing in the November, 1989, issue of the
Braille Monitor:

            THE DILEMMA OF THE SHELTERED SHOP WORKER
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

     It is common knowledge that most of the workshops for the
blind in the United States have substandard working conditions and
pay shamefully low wages to their blind employees. They can get
away with this because of a provision in the federal Fair Labor
Standards Act which says that blind shop workers may be paid less
than the minimum wage if they cannot produce as much as a sighted
worker similarly situated in private industry. Of course, sighted
workers in private industry cannot be paid less than the minimum
wage regardless of their productive capacity. And then there is
also the question of how productive capacity is measured and who is
similarly situated.

     Presumably tests are made, but we have repeatedly demonstrated
that many of those tests are rigged. What would happen to the
average factory worker in the United States if there were no
federal labor laws, no unions, and no governmental mechanisms for
inspection? All we have to do for an answer is to look at what
happened during the last century. But with the blind it is even
worse. Nobody believes that the average sighted person is incapable
of working competitively, but the traditional wisdom is that the
blind are substandard and only able to work if they are given
charity and special consideration. Attitudes are changing, but the
outmoded notions are still far too prevalent.

     In the circumstances it is not surprising that sheltered
workshop managers take advantage of the situation and exploit. It
would be remarkable if they did not. There are budgets to meet,
administrative salaries to pay, and little likelihood that the
managers will have to pay penalties (and certainly not personal
penalties) if they stretch the law or cheat. Therefore, they say
that their employees are not really workers at all but just
trainees, that most of them are multiply handicapped, and that the
workers (no, trainees) like the conditions at the shop, and
wouldn't have them otherwise.

     So what do you do if you are a blind employee in a sheltered
shop in the United States today? If you complain, try to help form
a union, or contact government authorities, you are likely to get
fired, have your wages cut, or be told that there just isn't enough
work to keep you on a full-time basis. It may be done with big
words and professional terminology. It may even be documented and
supported by studiesbut it hurts just as much, and the message is
just as clear. On the other hand, if you remain silent, you are
likely to continue with starvation wages and substandard conditions
for the rest of your life. It is not easy, and it is not pleasant;
but it is the everyday experience of many blind shop workers
throughout the country.

     Here is where the National Federation of the Blind comes in.
Unlike labor unions, we are knowledgeable about the Fair Labor
Standards dodge and the ways of the professionals, and we cannot be
bamboozled. Moreover, we are strong enough to resist pressure, and
we cannot be intimidated. Through our division for shop workers
(the Blind Industrial Workers of America) and through local
chapters, workshop employees are joining the Federation in growing
numbers. They are beginning to have heightened expectations and to
feel their strength.

     President Maurer recently received a letter from an NFB
chapter officer concerning conditions in the local workshop. The
letter and President Maurer's response are indicative of what is
beginning to happen in the shops, and I want to share them with
you. For obvious reasons the name and locality are being omitted.
These letters should cause each of us to do soul-searching and to
ask ourselves what action we can take to help the shop workers in
our local areas. Regardless of our financial situation or social
position, each of us has a stake in what happens to the shop
workers. Their struggle is our struggle; their hope is our hope;
their dream is our dream. Here is the correspondence:

     Dear President Maurer:

     At our last chapter meeting we discussed at length the
workshop for the blind here in our city. As I am sure you know,
this is a sheltered workshop that employs many handicapped persons,
including a few blind, and some of our chapter members. Most of
these people, including myself, are paid less than the minimum
wage. Last July there was a ruling by the board of directors of the
shop that they were going to pay each worker what he or she
produced and no longer have any make-up pay. In the past each
person was guaranteed a base rate and also received more than that
if his piece rate was above this rate.

     Since only about fifteen percent are blind, it is next to
impossible to get a union in there. Many of the workers are slow
learners and would not understand the benefits of the union. Often
we are put on jobs where we do not make close to the minimum wage,
and the shop management assures us that soon new time studies will
be madebut they never are. The employees are hesitant to file a
complaint with the Labor Board because we are fearful that if a
hearing were held, we would still not get the higher wages.

     It was mentioned at our last chapter meeting that the
Federationists who are working at the shop should sign a petition,
stating the complaints, and circulating it to the suppliers of
contracts for the shop, thus making them aware of the problem.

     Our chapter is wanting to help in any way it can, but we do
not want to do the wrong thing. We have thought of going to the
press or the news media, but the local stations have been doing
advertising for the workshop. Any advice you can give is
appreciated by all of us.

     Sincerely yours,  Baltimore, Maryland

     Dear :

     I have your recent letter describing problems of blind workers
at your local workshop. In 1986 a law was adopted by Congress at
the urging of the National Federation of the Blind. This law said
that any person working in a sheltered workshop for the blind who
was being paid less than the minimum wage had the right to file an
appeal with the Department of labor. The Department of Labor is
responsible for conducting a hearing to determine whether the wages
paid to the blind employee are proper. The employer must
demonstrate that the wages are fair. If the employer fails to do
this, the blind worker is entitled to receive at least the minimum
wage. The burden of proof is on the employer. The employee does not
have to show that the wages paid are unfair. Subminimum wages are
presumed to be unfair unless the sheltered shop administrator can
show that they are reasonable.

     It is not necessary to establish a union before the complaints
are filed with the Department of Labor. The complaints may be filed
whether there is a union established or not. If workers want to
file such a complaint, the National Office of the Federation is
ready to help.

     If a workshop is to receive contracts from the federal
government through National Industries for the Blind, seventy- five
percent (75%) of its direct labor hours must be performed by blind
employees. If your local workshop is using very many sighted
laborers, it may be in violation of those standards. A complaint
may be in order on these grounds as well.

     If there are workers who want to raise these questions or
others before the Department of Labor, please let me know. Part of
the reason for the National Federation of the Blind is to help with
problems like these.

     Cordially, Marc Maurer, President National Federation of the
Blind

     This is the letter from the local chapter and President
Maurer's response. Is it any wonder that the managers of the
sheltered shops resent the Federation and call us names? Is it any
wonder that they have voted to give up to $200,000 a year to NAC
(the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving the Blind
and Visually Handicapped)? Is it any wonder that NAC is willing to
take the money and to accredit these organizations? The answers are
obvious, and they speak for themselves.

     The pattern of substandard working conditions and subminimum
wages prevailed in numerous sheltered workshops throughout the
decade of the eighties, despite the 1986 amendments and the earlier
blistering exposure of these practices in the Wall Street Journal
in January of 1979. Conditions in the workshops were chillingly
described in several hearings before committees of Congress. For
example, one employee of a sheltered shop in Utah, Premo Foianini,
was beaten with a stick by his supervisor for daring to offer
testimony concerning the exploitive wages and sweatshop conditions
in his workplace. The report of another situation in the Richmond,
Virginia, sheltered shopknown as the Virginia Industries for the
Blindmay be taken as typical of many. This is how it appeared in
the Monitor of May- June, 1988:

     THE RICHMOND WORKSHOP: BAD MANAGEMENT, QUALITY SERVICES, AND
NAC

     This article appears in the January, 1988, Newsletter of the
National Federation of the Blind of Virginia. As Federationists
know, Charlie Brown is NFBV President. The information and
statistics revealed in the article should be the occasion for shock
and sorrow. The fact that they are not is indicative of the
widespread problems which exist in the sheltered workshops for the
blind throughout the country.

     Moreover, it is not at all surprising that Virginia Industries
for the Blind is accredited by NAC (the National Accreditation
Council for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped).
In view of NAC's history for the past twenty years one would be
surprised if it were otherwise. How long must the blind of this
nation endure the kind of conditions which are the everyday
commonplace in the shops and which are blessed by NAC in the name
of professionalism! It is no exaggeration to say that the term
professional, which should be positive and complimentary when
applied to employees of programs that are designed to give service
to people, has become to the blind of this country a virtual swear
worda bitter term of mockery and disillusionment. Here is Charlie
Brown's article.

     Some time ago Ed Peay, President of our Richmond Chapter,
wrote to George Kogar, Deputy Commissioner of the Department for
the Visually Handicapped, and asked him thirty questions about the
Virginia Industries for the Blind facility located in Richmond. Mr.
Kogar answered Ed's questions in a letter Ed received at the end of
November of 1987. We think many of you will be interested in Mr.
Kogar's responses to the questions.

     According to Mr. Kogar's letter, there are thirty-three blind
workers and two trainees employed in the workshop. All of the blind
workers are employed in direct labor. All of the supervisors and
management personnel are sighted. Only fifteen of the thirty-five
blind workers receive the federal minimum wage. All of the sighted
production workers, of course, must receive at least the federal
minimum wage.

     Mr. Kogar also states that The average annual earnings of a
production worker is $6,676.80 per year. Remember that this figure
includes the relatively higher earnings of the sighted production
workers who must be paid the minimum wage. Mr. Kogar goes on to say
that The average for nonproduction workers is $11,264.26. Again,
remember that all of these folks are sighted. One sometimes wonders
if the Virginia Department for the Visually Handicapped is
operating a sheltered shop for the sighted rather than a sheltered
shop for the blind.

     There is the additional matter of layoffs. Mr. Kogar informs
us that the industry has laid off blind employees on two occasions
over the past three years. No sighted employees were laid off
during this time period.The average duration of a layoff for a
blind employee would be about eight weeks of intermittent work.

     In his cover letter Mr. Kogar, to his credit, concedes, The
Industry has not been managed well for a long period of time. It
will be a slow process to correct all of the problems of the past.
In this regard the workshop director was let go last year.

     Long-time Federationists know that we have been pointing out
problems in the workshop for years. Officials have promised us that
things would get better. They have not.

     During all of this time, anyone who picks up a VDVH brochure
or sees the agency letterhead finds proudly displayed the NAC
symbol. This symbol proclaims that the agency and its workshop are
fully accredited. Everything was deemed to be okay. We the blind
are just troublemakers. NAC, everyone was told, would assure that
blind people would receive quality services. Without NAC who knows
what might happen to the VDVH programs? Well, for one thing, people
might have paid attention to the problems that exist in the
Richmond workshop at lot sooner if VDVH had not chosen to hide
behind the fictitious NAC shield. But all that is water over the
dam. Yet, what are we, the blind of Virginia, to believe when in
spite of everything VDVH Commissioner McCann tells us that he is
wedded to NAC?

     When Marc Maurer rose to address the 1989 convention of the
National Federation of the Blind in Denver, on the occasion of the
annual Presidential Report, he was able to announce a significant
victory in the struggle with the workshopsa victory that (like the
bloodied effort of Premo Foianini and his fellow shopworkers in
Utah) did not come without pain and sacrifice on the part of the
blind employees. In short, there was good news and bad news in the
dramatic account of events at the Southwest Light-house for the
Blind in Lubbock, Texas. Fortunately the good far outweighed the
bad; but the shocking nature of that bad newsits ugly note of
physical violenceserved as a reminder that the fight to organize
was still going on for blind people, and that it was still very
much a fight. It had become increasingly easy to forget that harsh
fact; for although it was known that problems remained in the
sheltered shops, they were not thought to include gross abuse and
harassment. Few could imagine that, as Glenn Crosby was to reveal,
the abuse at the Lubbock workshop was not a rare or isolated
occurrence but a practice so common and routine as to be considered
normal operating procedure. Crosby, an NFB Board Member who was
among the principal organizers of union activity in Lubbock, told
the National Convention that there was at least one supervisor in
the workshop who (on a regular basis when frustrated and
aggravated) would walk over to blind workers and slap them. It was
so common, he added, that these people didn't even realize that
they were being assaulted. He went on to describe what happened
when the blind workers did come to realize what was being done to
them, not only physically but economically and psychologically:

     The workers in Lubbock called the National Federation of the
Blind, and we responded by going out to help. We formed a picket
line and were able to get a lot of good press coverage. We took
pledges and organized a union. We were able to win a hearing from
the Labor Department and are now in the middle of filing
complaints. And finally, we have now been able to run off the
Director of the shop.

     That straightforward summary of the Lubbock situation was
amplified and placed in context by Marc Maurer in the course of his
Presidential Report to the National Convention. His comments not
only underlined the significance of the Texas episode but
illustrated the strategic dexterity of Federation leaders in their
pursuit of justice and fair play for the blind. This is what he had
to say:

     Approximately six thousand blind people are employed in
sheltered workshops throughout the country. Very often, working
conditions are poor and wages are low. Nowhere is this more
dramatically demonstrated than in the Southwest Lighthouse for the
Blind in Lubbock, Texas. Last September I went to Lubbock to meet
with workers from the Lighthouse. I discovered that most of them
were being paid two dollars and five cents an hour. A few were
receiving even lesssome as little as eighty-five cents. A month
earlier, the Lighthouse president had told the workers that the
agency was planning to begin deducting money from their pay
envelopes for their health insurance coverage. Health insurance had
previously been provided by the workshop. Most of the workers
barely had enough for their food and other living expenses. Never-
theless, agency officials insisted that these employees must pay
for health insurance or be fired. Instead of handing over a
substantial portion of their meager wages, the workers called on
the Federation, and the blind took to the streets. The newspaper
stories about the injustice in the workshop spread over the nation,
and both television and radio carried the news of the exploitation.
The Lighthouse president changed his mind. The workers would
continue to receive health insurance, and the pay in their
envelopes would not be cut. We won the first round.

     Before the end of September, we had taken action to begin the
next step. We hired a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and helped the
Lighthouse workers file complaints with the United States
Department of Labor. The minimum wage is three dollars and
thirty-five cents an hour. Most sheltered shop workers in Lubbock
are receiving two dollars and five cents. Nevertheless, they are
expected to work a long day and produce results. The wages are
artificially low and shamefully meager. So, we made plans to bring
pressure to change them. We submitted complaints to the Department
of Labor. These were the first appeals ever filed under the 1986
amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act, and it will be remem-
bered that they were filed by the National Federation of the Blind.
Because of our efforts to educate members of Congress in 1985 and
1986, all blind people receiving subminimum wages have the right to
challenge the fairness of their pay. The lawyer we hired once
served as the Assistant Secretary of Labor. In that position he
learned about the workshops and how they maneuver to violate the
law.

     In October of last year still another element was added to the
battle. With our help, shop employees asked that they be permitted
to join a labor union. The Lighthouse challenged their right to
organize. By November we were preparing for a full-blown hearing
before an officer of the National Labor Relations Board. This
hearing was of major importance because several months earlier, a
judicial decision had been issued by the eighth circuit Court of
Appeals saying that blind workers at the Arkansas Lighthouse for
the Blind could not join a union. The right of blind workers in
sheltered workshops to organize was being eroded. After the setback
in Arkansas, a highly visible public counterstroke was required. We
needed to protect shop workers, and Lubbock was the place to do it.
Without reviewing all the factors involved, let me just say that
the National Federation of the Blind knows about blindness and the
law. We are also able to get things done. On December 30, 1988, the
workers voted. The question to be answered was: would the workers
join a unionor not. By the most overwhelming margin ever recorded
in any sheltered workshop election, the workers gave their answer.
We won that round, too. There is a union at the Southwest
Lighthouse for the Blind in Lubbock, Texas.

     Partnership and Progress

     The long campaign of the National Federation of the Blind to
transform the system of sheltered workshops in America from the
blind alleys of the past to modern channels of legitimate
employmenta campaign waged continuously through half a centurywas
afflicted more than most with episodes of crisis, confrontation,
and conflict. At virtually every step of the way, as we have seen,
the forces of reform were met and countered by forces of reaction
determined to retain custodial control over these sweatshop
industries which were often (so it was said) as shady as they were
sheltered. Progress came slowly, when it came at all; and it almost
never came voluntarily, without struggle and recrimination. The
sustained conflict often seemed like a nonlethal form of trench
warfare, with the battle lines clearly drawnon one side the
insurgent troops of the organized blind, on the other the
entrenched mercenaries of the workshop system. No impartial
observer looking on at the fray could fail to perceive the values
at issue: They were the vested interests of the old order, the
ancien regime, striving to stay alive, pitted against the
democratic interests of the organized blindof a new world
struggling to be born.

     Nevertheless, as the first fifty years of Federationism came
to a close, the portents of a better day for sheltered shop workers
included growing signs of improved relations between the organized
blind and numerous workshop management teams across the land. One
illustration of such a cooperative relationship, based on the
recognition of mutual advantage, was contained in the remarks of
the president of Blind Industries and Services of Maryland, Richard
J. Brueckner, at the state convention of the NFB of Maryland in
1989. As the Editor of the Monitor pointed out in the February 1990
issue, these remarks gained significance in light of past
difficulties with the Maryland agency:

     As Monitor readers know, the Editor said, Blind Industries and
Services of Maryland (BISM) has not enjoyed an unruffled
relationship with the organized blind. Richard Brueckner assumed
the presidency of the agency at the beginning of 1989, and early on
he began sending signals that he would like to establish
constructive relations with the National Federation of the Blind of
Maryland. Invited to address the convention of the Maryland
affiliate in November of 1989, Brueckner delivered a speech more
encouraging than any in recent years from an official of the state
agency. He said in part:

     As most of you know, BISM (Blind Industries and Services of
Maryland) has existed in one form or another since 1908. I did not
come here today to dwell on the past, but rather to talk about the
present and future of the new BISM, which started on January 1,
1989. The theme of my speech today can be summarized in two words,
responsibility and accountability.

     As President of BISM, I can say that we expect to meet these
awesome responsibilities and are perfectly willing to be held
accountable for our actions and results. Who are we at BISM
accountable to? In response to that question, I list the following:
1) The Governor of the State of Maryland, 2)The Legislature of the
State of Maryland, 3) The BISM Board of Trustees, who are appointed
by the Governor and ratified by the Legislature, 4) All the blind
people in the State of Maryland, 5) The National Federation of the
Blind (NFB), 6) The employees of BISM, 7) The vendors in the
Maryland Vending Program for the Blind, 8) The Department of
Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR), and 9) National Industries for the
Blind (NIB).

     Commenting on Brueckner's speech, the Monitor said: His
message was constructive and sensible. It is too soon to be certain
how things will develop, but the early signs are hopeful for a
positive relationship with an industries program that employs a
number of blind people.

     Accordingly, as the movement of the organized blind prepared
to enter its second half-century, accordingly, the saga of the
sheltered workshops remained as uncertain as it was unfinished.
Much had been accomplished over the decades; much was still to be
done. The right to organize had been won more than a decade
earlier. Minimum wage protection was still not available to blind
workers in all states, but the 1986 amendments to the Fair Labor
Standards Act offered an appeal procedure for persons victimized by
substandard wages. Union contracts were in force at sheltered
workshops in Houston, Texas, and Cincinnati, Ohio; and labor
representation had been selected by the workers at the Lighthouse
for the Blind in Lubbock, Texas. To be sure, not all efforts to
organize unions in the workshops had been fruitful; but the success
rate of labor organization was increasing, as was the interest in
pursuing that course on the part of shop workers throughout the
country. Meanwhile, some sheltered workshops were continuing to pay
less than the minimum wage to their blind laborers; but a growing
number had reached that level and were providing a respectable
standard of pay. Thus the many-sided struggle of the blind toward
reform of the workshopsfor a living wage, for decent working
conditions, for protection from abuse, for the right to organize
and to bargain collectivelywas far from over. But there were
hopeful signs of a new spirit which could be the harbinger of a
future age of partnership and progress.

     And there was something else in the air as well, in the final
decade of the century, of still greater portent and promise. There
was a change in the climate of opinion, a subtle but definite
warming trend in the general atmosphere, which had been brought
about by the combined efforts of all the organized blind through
the years and decades since 1940. It was the spirit of
Federationism abroad in the landthe spirit of a people's movement
of irresistible force, of boundless confidence, and of genuine
pride. It was not likely that the walls of any sheltered shop, or
even of the entire workshop system, could long prevail against this
elemental force of consciousness and willwhich had long since found
its eloquent expression in a few simple lines first spoken at a
convention of the early seventies, and thereafter recited year
after year by Federationists in a kind of communal chorus:

     We are simply no longer willing to be second-class citizens.
We want no strife or confrontation; but we will do what we have to
do. We know who we areand we will never go back.

     