The myth of transition: contractualizing disability in the sheltered workshop

This paper investigates notions of transition and independence, as well as the current circumstances that detain countless disabled people in employment endeavors that not only pay meager wages but also cement a lifelong servitude to the workshop. Sheltered workshops exist on the basis and replication of a structure that incarcerates disabled people within vocational‐like settings. This paper begins a discussion of the social contract that occurs between the disabled person in the workshop. The workshop is no longer a place of societal liberation that affords the individual the opportunity to learn vocational skills, but rather it has become an institution that creates its own army of workers that will forever be subjected to a life in the workshop because of their disability status. Acknowledgement Much gratitude is expressed to Sharon L. Snydee for her valuable guidance as well as Eunjung Kim for her insightful edits. Notes 1. The average employee earns 37 USD a week, however in my experience we often had employees make 37 USD a month, equating to some 30 cents an hour for paid labor. This is all because sheltered workshops are able to pay employees piece rate. This means that each item that is produced is worth a certain amount, based on a mathematical equation in which a non‐disabled employee works for an hour and the products created in the hour are divided by the minimum wage to create a per piece rate, often times resulting in one item being produced for a fraction of a penny in labor costs to the workshop. 2. Wiseman often spends long amounts of time capturing the life of the workshop without any sort of fancy editing that would create a flashy plot. The effect is an intrusional eye into the workshop that theoretically provides a value neutral account of the events there.