The Value of Disabled Work Done for other Disabled People: a Reflection at 10am
Maria Scharnke is an autistic student in her final year of high school.
Three hours ago, somewhere in another room, outside the DS (Disability Services) building I was camping out in, the kids I have been a mentor to laughed and giggled and chortled, and I squirrelled away the contentment they were alright for a rough day. I have been — and still am — worried about what would happen to them when I left school, and them behind, to step into the big scary world of waiting for university acceptance and being too-disabled-to-hold-down-a-job-and-not-disabled-enough-for-the-pension. One of these days I’ll get there, and find myself paid employment. I am fortunate enough to not need it to survive, right now. I certainly put in work ethic, blood sweat and tears, and my whole heart into volunteer work; I campaign. I write articles. I do DS (Disability Studies, distinct from Services) research. I mentor other people with disabilities.
But no, not yet a job. When I was in middle school, a teacher I had thought ‘one of the good ones’ helpfully informed me that speaking out against injustice, to the face of authority, was why I would be fired from my first job. He told me this after insulting a disabled student who wasn’t me, and after I told him he had no right to speak about a child like that. I never came him a chance to be proven, whether it be right or wrong — I couldn’t be fired from a first job if I’d never acquired one. Other teenagers my age hold down jobs in service, and sometimes apprenticeships or training courses on the side (at least in the area where I live). If somebody doesn’t get their first job before they reach the magic little number ‘18,’ they won’t have work experience on a subminimum minor’s wage, and it’ll be hard to find first employment. That will be me.
I’m familiar with the idea of a subminimum wage. A few weeks ago, I sold a canvas artwork of mine, a simplistic redrawing of a renaissance painting in black and pastel pink, printed by me and purchased by Micah Projects, a social services not-for-profit. It’s displayed with my artist’s note, my sources say, a scathing explanation, first scribbled on scrap paper at the dining table, of why I had charged so little. Disabled work is devalued, I told the world, now on a wall. I’m not-disabled-enough to be paid a percentage of minimum wage, because I wouldn’t be tested for “work capacity,” and I would never work in a day centre to be exploited for unethical underpaid labour, but I have placed myself in solidarity with my disabled siblings who are.
I charged for costs of production, and then 75% of two hours’ minimum wage (I know, that’s a speed-paint, a whole canvas’ worth in two hours). The difference between that and full minimum, for that artwork, would have been little more than ten dollars. It’s not much, in this instance. Scaled up enough, though, it would be.
It’s not much, my five laughing middle schoolers, but scaled up enough, it will be. We’ll all get there, some day, all of the disabled kids who never had the help that we needed. I need to believe that. How else can I keep working to make it a reality?
