Tough fight for disabled
Range of issues leaves labor force untapped
After surgeons installed two mechanical valves to repair his congenital heart defect, Brian Smith knew he had seen the end of his grease-monkey days. Heavy lifting was out of the question, and he had to avoid sharp objects because his new blood-thinning medication made cuts potentially disastrous.
Unable to work at his former job as a mechanic at a Framingham car dealership, Smith, now 49, went on Social Security for a few years. By 2002, he had recovered and, no longer qualifying for public assistance, was told to get a job.
"They were telling me I could go back to work, but they all agreed I couldn't do what I used to do," said the Bellingham resident. "They were thinking about me selling movie tickets. But I have two kids. I wasn't going to go back to a job for minimum wage."
After a four-year job search, his first in decades, Smith received training in a state program and landed a position as an automobile appraiser for a Mendon company. Now he's a proud earner.
But when he talks about those years spent knocking on prospective employers' doors, his tone is humble.
"I twisted wrenches since I graduated high school, from '76 on up," he said. "It definitely was a stressful time."
Smith's happy ending is the exception, not the rule.
Across the state, disabled people and their advocates say that while progress is being made in putting the disabled onto payrolls, most are still unemployed. The gap between disabled people and the help they need leaves a hole in the region's economy, in the form of an untapped workforce, they say.
Although the Massachusetts unemployment rate is hovering between 4 and 5 percent overall, around 70 percent of the state's approximately 550,000 disabled residents older than 18 don't work, said Charles Carr, commissioner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, the agency that helped retrain Smith.
"That's an embarrassingly high statistic for any minority group," Carr said.
A number of factors contribute to most disabled people remaining in a jobless limbo, as Smith experienced for four years, specialists say. Some disabled individuals simply cannot work. But many face hurdles to their job search that include discrimination, transportation problems, and the concern that if they demonstrate the capacity to work, they might lose their healthcare or other benefits.
"People are afraid - they'll never admit to this, especially with the Americans with Disability Act in place - of the costs associated with someone who has a disability," said Lisa Taleghani, an insurance manager at
Working with companies who have purchased Sun Life group insurance packages, Taleghani helps employees find new jobs when they can't perform their old duties because of injury or illness.
She estimated that four-fifths of companies in the region are unprepared to employ disabled workers.
"They don't want to make the accommodations," Taleghani said.
Employers' reluctance to spend money on such equipment as special telephones or computer screens for the hearing or visually impaired is particularly difficult to track, Carr said, because it's hard to distinguish between a legitimate business decision and an illegal prejudice in the hiring process.
"You're dealing with people who are not required to hire people with disabilities," Carr said. "At the same time, the American Disabilities Act says you can't discriminate."
Often, companies or co-workers are not as prejudiced as they are ignorant, said Patrick Doak, a Sun Life employee who has worked for the company as an information technology project manager for three years.
"Disabilities are somewhat intimidating," said Doak, who has been partially paralyzed since he was shot in a hunting accident 29 years ago. "A lot of people are hesitant on approaching you. They're very cautious about what they say, that sort of thing."
Even if a business is open to purchasing equipment or has created an environment that accepts disabled workers, the disabled often don't seek or can't accept jobs because traveling to work can be difficult, especially outside of urban areas.
"If you are going to a job, reliability is important; you've got to be on time," said Kirk Joslin, president of Easter Seals Massachusetts, a nonprofit organization that provides services, including computer courses, for disabled people.
"In the city, it's easy to hop on the subway or take the bus system," he said. "But in the suburbs, public transportation is lacking."
Unemployed disabled individuals often worry that a job will disqualify them from receiving public assistance, advocates say. Many fear that their benefits will stop once they receive a paycheck and won't resume if their disability forces them to leave work.
Carr said that recent state and federal changes to Social Security and other entitlement programs have made it easier for people to get back on public assistance if their disability forces them to do so. "People worry: 'What if I don't make it? What if I get sick or something happen?' " he said. "Fear is a very powerful hurdle to motivation. Now if you do go to work, you're not penalized the way you used to be."
Training programs - such as those provided by the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, Easter Seals, and Sun Life - are key to mobilizing the untapped workforce of disabled people, Joslin said, but existing programs are just a drop in the bucket.
"You have a state economy that keeps saying we need more trained workers," he said. "In a state with a population that is not growing but aging, people with disabilities are part of the solution to having an adequate workforce. But people with disabilities aren't thought of as part of that."
The commission trained and placed almost 4,000 disabled people in jobs last fiscal year, according to commission data. The average pay for those jobs was $12.50 an hour. Easter Seals trained around 1,100, Joslin said. Sun Life works with about 200 disabled employees of its client companies every year, Taleghani said.
Carr said that many disabled people need to change their attitudes about work. Having lived in state hospitals after breaking his neck at the age of 14 in 1968, Carr said he fought to attend college over the objections of many who felt he could not handle the workload. In 1974, he helped to found a nonprofit advocacy group for disabled people known as the Boston Center for Independent Living.
"We're trying to get people out of the cycle of poverty and get them out of this mentality," he said. "I'm paralyzed from the neck down and I'm the commissioner, so people can work." 