Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 8, 1991 TAG: 9104090497
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A/8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Framme isn't in a time warp. Employment goes through cycles, and in the next decade a labor shortfall is foreseen. Population growth so slowed during the 1960s and 1970s that fewer young people will be entering the work force, while more older people will be retiring. To cope with shortages, society will have to make better use of people who now have trouble finding any jobs at all. These include the disabled.
"People with disabilities are a large and growing segment of our population," Framme told a gathering at UVa honoring Central Virginia employers who hire the disabled. "[T]oday many more than before are able to pursue careers because of improving medical technology and the work of our rehabilitation facilities.
"We can meet our labor shortfalls by utilizing all our talent - putting to greater use alternate labor sources - especially those traditionally underrepresented, like citizens with disabilities."
That's a big pool of potential labor (which grows by an estimated half-million a year). Two-thirds of America's 37 million physically disabled (and of Virginia's 300,000) have no jobs. Those who do, commonly get only low-level employment that offers little chance for advancement. In 1987, disabled men earned 64 percent as much as other male workers, disabled women 62 percent as much as other women - even less than their comparative earnings in 1980. The disabled are often stereotyped as capable of only limited work and not of improving their performance.
Their own views of themselves may be quite different. Mainstreaming and other efforts to bring the disabled into fuller participation in schools, jobs and society have raised their expectations. Their horizons were broadened again last year with passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, aimed at halting discrimination against the handicapped in many public places as well as in work places.
The full cost of implementing that act will not be known for years; its total expense may well exceed its total benefits. But because of economic needs, some employers were opening their doors to handicapped workers long before the law was passed.
Such needs will create more work than will moral suasion or legal coercion. By the century's end, to meet a nationwide labor shortage, businesses will make more and better jobs available for the disabled - and will train them as needed. Government now spends $57 billion a year to care for disabled people. How much better for them, as well as for the able-bodied, if more of them can make their own way.
by CNB