bad to the indivitia is lack of language and communicative skills.

14. +0. The idea of integrating deaf or any other handicapped child into regular classes is not new or modern. It has been around for a long time and it is known that approximately 90 of deaf children put into a limited situation of inte rated claves eventually fail. They should be put into controlled learning situations where the specialized nelp and services they need are provided rather than throwin, then into a whirlpool and telling them to 'Sink or swim." Their handicap is their proulem and in this respect, it is a language and comunication problem similar to that of Spanish speal ing students and blacks. Placing deaf children side by side with normal children does not necessarily mean you are integrating them since the communication barrier is still there, and this communication barrier is also a learning barrier.

While the label "Low Achieving" might not be the most appropriate one, the fact remains that this is what these people are. It is not necessary to igentify such cheters as rehabilitation facilities for low achievers. They should. ideally, be known a rehensive Rehabilitation Centers for neaf Youths

and Adu s.

The effect such programs would have on children and their parents would most assuredly be on the positive side. Since no rermanent facilities exist for low achieving deaf people, many beco curd as on their families and the states, whereas, de instration have 56H that many of these people can be trained for economic and social inget). ance. he establishment of Federally funded rehabilitation centers for

i woule usture that these people do beco Jeling meal is of suc ety router than its burden.

Senator CRANSTON. Our next witness is Ralf Hotchkiss, director, Center for Concerned Engineering, accompanied by Diane Lattin, researcher.

Please proceed.

STATEMENT OF RALF HOTCHKISS, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR CONCERNED ENGINEERING; ACCOMPANIED BY DIANE LATTIN, RESEARCHER

Mr. HOTCHKISS. I will just read a few parts of this because of the time problem.

The Center for Concerned Engineering is a group of engineers working with Ralph Nader in an effort to redirect the Nation's engineering priorities to best affect all segments of the population. First, on sheltered workshops, a few comments.

In 1967, Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, in a report to Con gress, made the following appraisal of the workshop situation:

The clients of workshops are limited in their abilities to produce they are limited by the frequently obsolete methods of organization and production of the workshop. To measure the "worth" of a handicapped client by this "productivity" while making him work with outmoded equipment, or on jobs long ago automated, or with modern equipment which is not adapted to the individual's needs is to foredoom the great majority of handicapped clients to subminimum wages. The workshop system of remuneration is comparable to that which would exist today if cigar manufacturing workers were obliged to roll cigars by hand but be remunerated on a comparative basis with productivity of the cigar factory worker in a modern plant.

As a result of this kind of pay scale determination, most people in sheltered workshops earn below the minimum wage, many below subsistence level, and below the welfare level; so they must live either on their famiiles and friends or on welfare.

They are not given self-sufficiency because of the work they perform.

Also with regard to certifying the workshops, qualifying them, under the Department of Labor, criteria considered in determining the advisability of issuing special certificates for training or evaluation programs, according to the 1967 Federal regulations, are that there be, (1) competent instruction or supervision; (2) a written curriculum and plan of procedure, design to obtain the objectives of the programs; (3) written records made at periodic intervals of not more than 3 months, showing progress of individual clients; and, (4) in the case of a training program, a progression of wage-rate increases as the trainee advances through steps of the program.

These criteria are from the Code of Federal Regulations which apply to the Department of Labor. Studies done by HEW at workshops which applied for grants were not governed by these regulations, but they cite instances where these criteria were not met.

Even though these workshops were found to be lacking in areas required by labor regulations, they were given grants.

In those cases where a grant was denied, the workshops continued to operate even though they did not meet Department of Labor specifications.

HEW, by the way, did not provide the Department of Labor with the details which led them to reject these sheltered workshops for HEW grants.

If rehabilitation agencies are to continue to use sheltered workshops as part of the rehabilitation process, it is obvious that existing legislation must be more strictly enforced and that the efforts of the Department of Labor and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare must be consolidated. The present methods are inadequate, to say the least, and the ones who suffer the consequences are the disabled consumers.

The rehabilitation process cannot effectively take place in the sheltered workshop because workshops must take in income to support themselves. In order to do this they must keep disabled individuals working in their shops when their abilities are good enough for them to succeed in competitive employment.

They also cannot employ to any large extent severely disabled workers because these workers cannot produce enough income for the workshop. Sheltered workshops in their present form are imprisoning those who, with a little more effort from the rehabilitation agency, would be placed in meaningful jobs.

The rehabilitation agencies are dumping many able people in sheltered workshops instead of training them adequately for real jobs-or worse yet, the very limited facilities of sheltered workshops are used for terminal training-training which can only demonstrate that the individual is beyond help and thus should be dropped from further rehabilitation services.

We would suggest that this act be amended to require that, rather than utilizing sheltered workshops for evaluation and training, State rehabilitation agencies should be done in accredited public and private Vocational training schools which are properly equipped to train people for jobs in the real world.

The funds authorized for the biomedical engineering research program and independent biomedical engineering projects could guarantee the development of many devices which people need to allow them to live a free and productive life.

In addition, however, a way of making the devices available to the public is needed. Thousands of ingenious devices are now recorded in the Patent Office and technical literature-devices which will effectively negate certain aspects of people's disabilities. But because only a few dozen or hundred people need the devices for the jobs they do, private companies cannot afford to stock and sell these devices.

Funds are needed to subsidize the formation of a public depot which would stock or have made all devices which have been shown to be of significant value but which are unprofitable to private industry. These devices could then be provided at reasonable cost to the individuals who need them.

The availability of these devices would also help tremendously with the development of new devices, as would the establishment of a National Information and Resource Center as specified in the act.

At present there is no way to completely assess the state of the art, so much development work just covers old ground. Most innovations come from the users, and since the manufacturers cannot or will not help, the ideas are now forgotten.

79-885 - 72 pt. 2 34

The information center, if properly organized, would provide very down-to-earth services which would affect all handicapped people in their everyday life. Solutions to problems, particularly those which cannot be exploited commercially, should be solicited from users and cataloged like patents in the Patent Office. Then biomedical engineers could very quickly find out where to start. More important, the technical consultation service mentioned in the act could and should provide information to individuals who cannot find or retain their job, housing, or transportation without it.

We are sure that the research, development, and information services provided by the act will be a taxpayer's bargain when measured in terms of the earning capacity they will produce.

But earning capacity is worthless if commensurate jobs are not provided-and this is precisely what will happen.

Groups such as the Disabled in Action have found that many corporations and public institutions systematically require applicants to meet medical qualifications completely unrelated to job performance. If this legislation is to achieve its goals of more satisfying and independent lives for America's disabled and less dependence upon public aid, then Congress must pass concurrent bills prohibiting discrimination on the basis of any factors not directly related to the task at hand.

Thank you.

Senator CRANSTON. Thank you very much.

To what would you attribute the very large increase in the number of sheltered workshops since 1967?

Mr. HOTCHKISS. For one thing, it appears to be a fairly lucrative business, not for stockholder profit, but for a tax writeoff as well as providing substantial income for people who manage the workshops. Senator CRANSTON. Why do you feel workshops have not updated their training?

Mr. HOTCHKISS. They have no real reason to do so. For example, the Goodwill program, the way they make their money is by getting donated goods which are old goods and refurbishing to the point where they can be sold. This is not the sort of business that a private investor could make a lot of money on a private-industry basis; and it is not the kind of job which requires the same skills that are used in modern production shops. If they were to have modern production equipment, they could not use it in this kind of program because they maintain the kind of programs they do they have no reason to modernize.

Senator CRANSTON. You do not think it is strictly a lack of funds? Mr. HOTCHKISS. I do not believe it is a lack of funds. In fact, I have seen some fairly good equipment be less used than should be in sheltered workshops simply because they have no use for it.

Senator CRANSTON. Could you be a little more specific as to the inaccessibility of certain handicapped people to the sheltered workshops; for example, people in the wheelchair?

Mr. HOTCHKISS. Well, some of the workshops that we have visited have been fairly inaccessible to people in wheelchairs and people on crutches and very hard to use by people with partial or full blindness, just because they are not set up in a very responsive way.

For instance, they have steps, building steps, on a sheltered workshop is sort of like building a moat without bridges around the Senate

Office Building. It is just an impassable barrier, and the people who work there must depend on the assistance of the managers of the workshop in order to get to work; and this is no way to build selfsufficiency, self-respect, and to encourage people to go out and do it on their own. That apparently is not the goal, despite the stated goals of many sheltered workshops.

Senator CRANSTON. How is wage earned by workers in these settings kept low, even though their output may be quite high?

Mr. HOTCHKISS. Well, they determine workshop on a production basis. For example, if somebody is nailing heels on shoes, they count how many heels he nails on a shoe per hour, and then pay him on a basis comparable to modern industry.

The difference is that a person in a sheltered workshop has a little tack hammer and modern industry often has automatic heelsetting pieces of equipment and there is no comparison; and so as a result, the wages in workshops are often unreasonably low.

Senator CRANSTON. Do you have any estimates or information as to how often and how carefully workshops are checked for adequacy and manpower by RSA, the Department of Labor, or State vocational rehabilitation agency?

Mr. HOTCHKISS. The Department of Labor, which is the primary certification, well, their certification, is to certify that workshops deserve to be sheltered from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Apparently that is what "sheltered" has come to mean. They only check 10 to 15 percent per year. At least that was back in 1969 when the last report we were able to find came out.

So that means that maybe once every 7 to 10 years somebody comes around to a sheltered workshop.

One sheltered workshop supervisor told us that the Department of Labor has the easiest forms to fill out. They require very little information. So if they do a good job of covering up on those forms, chances are slim that they will get inspected.

Senator CRANSTON. Do you have any estimates of how many staff members working for sheltered workshops are themselves disabled? Mr. HOTCHKISS. We have not found any. In how many workshops

has it been?

At least half a dozen workshops that we have checked in this area, plus two in Illinois. We have not found any except for a small percent of training personnel at one workshop who were handicapped.

Senator CRANSTON. Could you provide for the record the details? Mr. HOTCHKISS. Sure.

Senator CRANSTON. Do you have any estimate of the cost of your proposal on page 7 regarding the use of public and private training schools, instead of workshops to carry out work evaluation and training?

Mr. HOTCHKISS. In the long run, it would save money. In the short run, it probably would not cost a cent.

In 1967, the Department of Labor spent $13 million for evaluation and training and sheltered workshops. But based on what we have learned from the people who received this kind of evaluation and training, most of that $13 million was wasted. There is $13 million to spend on real education, much of which could be done in public high schools and colleges and vocational training schools.