Disabled workers and inflation

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Fri Jun 25 10:07:37 PDT 1999


Thursday, June 24, the National Council on Independent Living, the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems, and the National Council on Disability coordinated a joint meeting of their independent conferences. Labor Department Secretary Alexis Herman and Social Security Administration Commissioner Apfel were featured as keynote speakers. This is an excerpt from remarks of Alexis Herman at the White House:

As Labor Secretary, I have the privilege of announcing the latest employment statistics on the first Friday of every month. And this month, I was proud to report that unemployment is 4.2% -- a 29-year low.

But I don't have to tell any of you there's more to the story. We know

three out of four Americans with disabilities who want to work are not working. And we know the key to keeping the economy strong is tapping into the potential of every American. Because it really is very simple: when Americans with disabilities lose out on opportunity, all of us do.

As President Clinton has said: The last big group of people in this country who could keep the economy going strong with low inflation are Americans

with disabilities -- who can work -- who want to work -- and who are not in the workforce.

The President was crystal clear when he said every American should have a selfish interest in the pursuit of this goal in the most aggressive way possible.

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Would you say that Herman is saying that disabled workers can be used to keep the wage floor down (prevent inflation)???

Marta Russell



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