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Comment by temp8964 | Hacker News Reader

Not that straightforward. I know of a friend whose autistic son "works" for GoodWill. The friend loves to have her son to volunteer without pay at all, and she knows the payment is just a gesture. Exploiting? No. That's actually helping.

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this is exactly it. sheltered workplaces exist purely to provide a sense of community and actual value to people with disabilities lives. While some of us begrudge working the 9-5, there are a lot of people excluded from the societal norm of the day to day. With the costs of running Sheltered Workplaces far outweighing the income produced (and no expectation for it ever to) these are considered positive expenses for most communities.

The modern view is that they are sweatshops, and most of them are being shut down. https://www.paraquad.org/blog/lets-reform-sheltered-workshop...

I'm not sure if the real issue there was the foster and medical system in America 30 years or so ago or the sheltered workshop. Each sheltered workshop (Australian Disability Enterprises) I have volunteered with or worked with has been funded privately and/or run at a loss. They are not able to shunt a child with a disability into a position where they are sorting nuts and bolts etc. The other choice for a lot of these employees is to stay home or attend care centers. There are more benefits to including people in a work environment than excluding, even if it means creating one for them specifically.

In general, there’s an ongoing debate over whether sheltered workshops represent a social service to people with disabilities, allowing them to perform work even if they are essentially not paid for it, or if they are exploitative and discriminatory because they don’t pay a fair wage. I think it’s a complex issue, but I tend to come down with the people with disabilities who speak out against them (nothing about us, without us).

This again appears a system issue, not workshop issue. In a lot of the statements I have seen against the programs on offer here in Aus, were from people incorrectly assessed as being appropriate for sheltered workplaces. Appropriate medical assessment/intervention/care could result in a few instances of people being assessed job capable outside of the ADE but this in itself is a fault in a system that has one option of being ADE employment.

The discussion around it seems incredibly emotional to purposefully distort the opinion of people that ADE/SW are sweatshops or some Dickensian nightmare. I guess profit driven societies have taken advantage of it, like they have with the jail systems, education, law enforcement, military, healthcare...

edited - outcome>option

People seem to have some questions about my comment, here’s a much more detailed analysis: https://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2009/06/...

In short, the DOJ has generally contended in the past decade or so that sheltered workshops represent discrimination based on disability, and has been suing to shut them down or force them to pay their employees minimum wage.

This is mostly argument with regards to legal matters though, not actual outcomes of those with severe disabilities. Most sheltered workshops will shut down before being able to pay employees minimum wage. For those that legitimately are incapable of holding down a normal job, they will then have nothing. And having a job has repeatedly been shown to improve outcomes for the disabled.

I think this is a problem that doesn't have a single right answer. Either way some people will get the short end of the stick.

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