Sheltered workshops that employ thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities, often for just pennies an hour, would be forced to make drastic changes under a state proposal to eliminate a share of their public subsidies.
This week the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development is expected to approve a plan that would phase out nearly $2 million in annual subsidies and replace them with incentives to move employees into the general workforce.
"It's time to say, 'No more,' to this assumption that people with disabilities can't work" in the community, said Kim Peck, director of vocational rehabilitation services at the department. "Let's throw that out and say, everyone needs to contribute and can contribute and how can we … make that happen."
A recent Star Tribune investigation found that many of these workshops segregate people in cloistered work environments at low pay and with little hope for advancement into the competitive workplace.
While the proposal would be phased in over five years and affects just a small part of the state's total spending on sheltered workshops, it marks the first major step in decades to reform facilities that have long been a mainstay of Minnesota's system of support for people with disabilities.
With reduced funding, many of the state's nonprofit workshop operators will be pushed to redirect their focus to supporting workers in typical jobs in the community that pay at least the minimum wage, state officials say. Currently, about 12,000 Minnesotans with intellectual and developmental disabilities toil at these workshops, which often resemble large warehouses, doing menial tasks such as picking up garbage and packaging retail merchandise.
The state is under pressure from the federal courts to find more innovative ways to integrate people with disabilities into the broader community. Once viewed as a national leader in providing workplace supports, Minnesota now has one of the lowest rates of integrated employment in the nation: Only 13 percent of Minnesotans with disabilities who received state services in 2013 worked in the community alongside people without disabilities.
After a federal judge reproached the state for moving too slowly on disability reforms, the state unveiled a detailed blueprint, known as an Olmstead plan, for expanding employment, housing, transportation and other services for people with disabilities so they can live more meaningful and independent lives. More than 40 other states have already adopted Olmstead plans, which are named after a 1999 Supreme Court decision that found that the unjustified isolation of people with disabilities is discriminatory and violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.