Another factor in shortage of jobs for disabled
Letter to the Editor:
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Another factor in shortage of jobs for disabled
October 18, 2007
Your recent article "Tough fight for the disabled" (Globe West, Oct. 11) had as a second headline: "Range of issues leaves labor force untapped." One of the issues I didn't notice in the article was a mention of the impact of immigration, legal or otherwise, on the supply of lower-paying jobs that handicapped and disabled people have traditionally held.
An example of this kind of job is the clearing of shopping carts from store lots. My own mentally handicapped adult son is very proud of the job he has doing this three days per week, three hours per shift, at a local Home Depot.
Getting this job took some doing on the part of the agency that assists him. It also depends on a deliberate decision by his employer to employ the handicapped when there is an abundance of recent immigrant workers in the workforce, ready to work hard for very low wages. As the article describes, many disabled are unemployed, and this includes a lot of my son's peers who would dearly love a real job, which many of them had a few years ago and now can't get because of the glut of new workers willing to do the jobs that "nobody wants." Well, there are many who want to do those jobs, but who have been squeezed out of them.
Tom Largy
Wayland
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... _disabled/