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Index Number: 26380

[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

                              TIME TO FIGHT BACK

     For years, blind and visually impaired home instructors at the
New Jersey Commission for the Blind have been trying to get their
salary up to par with sighted professional co-workers.  Every
diplomatic route was taken; every argument, meticulously detailed.
The message they got?  "Blind people aren't worth equal pay."
     The Commission has a rehabilitation center where separate
sighted people teach braille, typing, activities of daily living,
cooking, sewing, home maintenance, crafts, etc.  CBVI's home
instructors, though, teach all of these skills, in their clients's
homes, not in a familiar surrounding.  Yet, the instructors at the
Rehab Center are paid $12,000 more per year than are the home
instructors.
     Home instructors have to be academically qualified and have
experience working with blind people to take a Civil Service test
for the job.  In addition, they must be able to teach the skills
they've learned as blind people. To be a vocational counselor in
that agency, on the other hand, a B.A. isn't even necessary.  Yet,
counselors can climb the career ladder to senior vocational
counselor, career placement specialist and supervisor, while home
instructors have no career ladder.  A person who never entered a
social work class can climb from social worker #2, to #1 to
supervisor.  But, of course, these two positions have been
traditionally off limits to blind people, while their occupants
also earn $12,000 more a year.
     Although there are other examples, it should suffice to say
the home instructors finally got fed up.  Thirteen of them hired
an attorney, Robert Gasser of Toms River to represent them.
     Shocked at the prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory
practices at the Commission for the Blind against blind staff, Mr.
Gasser writes: "The creation of a wage differential between the
sighted and blind instructors ... for equivalent work performed,
constitutes wage discrimination and is contrary to both federal and
state law on discrimination."  He has since filed suit against the
Commission for the Blind, the NJ Department of Human Services, the
NJ Department of Personnel and the Communications Workers of
America.
     In addition to this major civil suit, The U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S.
Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and the Communications
Workers of America are presently working on cases of discrimination
against the New Jersey Commission for the Blind because of its
discriminatory practices against blind employees.  Look for
progress reports.

John J. Dragona

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