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The Braille Monitor

June, 1989

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BLIND WORKERS CLAIM WAGES EXPLOITIVE

From the Editor: The

Southwest Lighthouse for the Blind in Lubbock, Texas continues to attract nationwide

publicity. Here is an article which appeared in the Columbia, Missouri, Daily

Tribune on March 6, 1989. It is one more indicator of the progress the National

Federation of the Blind is making and the changing public attitudes which are

accompaning it.

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP)

- Blind employees at a workshop established to rehabilitate them say they're

being exploited and are demanding the same wages their sighted counterparts

get for comparable work.

But the founder of

the Southwest Lighthouse for the Blind says the workshop trains blind people

for work in the private sector and is not required to pay the minimum wage.

The U. S. Department

of labor is investigating the workshop's wages, and Lighthouse officials are

to appear next month before an administrative law judge to defend the separate

wage scales for blind and sighted employees.

"I think they're

trying to have more of a factory out there than to do something for the blind,"

said David Rocco, a former Lighthouse employee who led a workers' strike in

August and was laid off in January.

The dispute comes

at a time when the blind are increasingly questioning their treatment at such

organizations. About 100 similar workshops employ 6,000 visually impaired people

nationwide. Employees at workshops in Houston and Cincinnati have formed unions

in the wake of wage and labor disputes. Unionization efforts by workers in

Little Rock, Arkansas, were denied by an appeals court.

"Blind people

have been exploited in workshops since workshops came into being," said

James Gashel, Director of Governmeiatal Affairs for the National Federation

of the Blind in Baltimore.

"When you're paying

$2.10 an hour, you're going to have a lot of wage disputes," added the

Federation's Piresident, Marc Maurer. "It's not enough to live on."

In Lubbock fourteen

blind workers, carrying canes and wearing signs reading "Lighthouse wages

are from the Dark Ages," walked off their jobs in August to protest the

$2.05 hourly wage and their $65-a-month health insurance fee.

They want the Lighthouse

to pay them the same $3.35 minimum wage other employees receive.

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