Contact: Beth Swedeen, WI BPDD (608) 220-2924
Lisa Pugh, Disability Rights Wisconsin, (608) 469-9385
Wisconsin Resident Selected for Key National Committee on Employment
Disability Organizations Applaud Selection of Advocate
MADISON, WI – A Wisconsinite has been chosen to serve on a select national committee established by Congress to make what some predict will be groundbreaking recommendations to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez announced on Monday that Lisa Pugh, Public Policy Director for Disability Rights Wisconsin, will serve as one of 17 members on the Advisory Committee on Increasing Competitive Integrated Employment for Individuals with Disabilities. Congress established the Committee this past summer as part of significant bi-partisan legislation.*
The Committee, required by the new Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act signed into law in July, will meet 8 times within the next year, submitting reports to both Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Republican and Democrat leaders indicated that employment and training services for individuals with disabilities remained a “critical need” even 25 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Committee experts will make recommendations to increase equal employment opportunities for individuals with significant disabilities in competitive jobs, including recommendations on the use and oversight of the certificate program that allows businesses to pay workers with disabilities sub-minimum wages.
Pugh, who coordinates Wisconsin’s Disability Policy Partnership between the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, People First Wisconsin, and Disability Rights Wisconsin, was chosen among more than 280 Committee applicants nationally. She joins experts on the Committee from six groups: self-advocates living with disability, providers of employment services, national disability organizations, experts from academia, employers, and individuals with expertise on increasing opportunities for competitive integrated employment for individuals with disabilities. Pugh was appointed as a representative of that final category. She is a parent to a youth with a significant disability and lives in Madison.
National disability experts expect the work of the Committee to have a significant impact on how people with disabilities are employed in their communities across the country. People with disabilities represent 9% of Wisconsin’s workforce; yet their employment rate is less than a third the rate for non-disabled workers. Overall, 27% of Wisconsin’s citizens with disabilities live in poverty.
The Committee will focus its efforts on improving rates of integrated employment, defined as jobs in which people with disabilities earn the same wages as their non-disabled co-workers, where the majority of employees do not have disabilities, and workers are paid directly by the business employing them. Very few individuals with disabilities in Wisconsin (less than 8% in the state’s long-term care system that includes Family Care and IRIS programs) experience integrated employment.
“This Committee is an incredible opportunity to recommend ways to make government systems work better for people and to raise expectations about the contributions people with disabilities can make to the workforce in our state and our nation,” says Pugh. “I am especially interested in recommendations that will help youth achieve their dreams of a job and career that matches their skills and interests and gives them more independence. I am glad to see I will be serving alongside private sector employers.”
“It has been demonstrated, time and time again, that when people with disabilities have access to meaningful employment opportunities, they become some of the most productive workers and contribute in a substantial way to their workplaces and the economy,” said U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Perez in a release Monday about the Committee appointments. “Employing people with disabilities is a win-win for workers, employers and the entire community. This is sound public policy, and the advisory committee will help us expand opportunities for more people with disabilities.”
Seven federal officials will also serve on the committee from the U.S. Department of Labor, the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Social Security, and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
*See the full Committee membership list and the U.S. Department of Labor press release at: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/
More information about the committee is available at http://www.dol.gov/odep/
