Despite Law, Hard Times for Blind Clockmakers

Rita McCabe says it was a proud moment back in 1979 when she gave her mother one of the clocks she had made at the Chicago Lighthouse, a century-old nonprofit group dedicated to employing the blind.

The clock still works. It’s simple and sturdy, a 12-inch face set in a deep brown frame -- the same type of clock that, for nearly three decades, has been keeping time inside most U.S. government offices.

The nonprofit’s hold on the market of helping government workers tell time came thanks to a 1930s federal law, called the Wagner-O’Day Act: It requires federal purchasing managers, whenever possible, to favor buying certain goods and services made by blind workers.

But amid lawmakers’ mantra to cut costs and stretch tax dollars -- as well as the globalization of the public marketplace -- the power of such legislation has waned. Chicago Lighthouse officials say that, time and again, state and federal agencies have ignored the law and opted for less expensive imports.

In addition to competition issues, the program originally intended to benefit the blind has become entwined with efforts to help people with other disabilities -- some not as well-defined -- and has helped trigger a review of the program.

There’s a lot of money at stake: The program has doubled in size in the last five years, thanks to a boost in military spending, and annually sets aside about $2.25 billion in contracts.

The law was designed to give market protection to enterprises such as Chicago Lighthouse, and for almost 30 years, orders for its clocks have been sent through the General Services Administration, the procurement arm of the federal government.

The Illinois nonprofit, which used to control nearly 80% of the federal contracts for timepieces, now has a market share of about 50%. Its customers are turning to the competition: a flood of clocks made in China.

As a result, Chicago Lighthouse has cut workers’ hours -- from a 40-hour week to a 30-hour week. Other programs for the blind around the nation have had a similar shift in fortunes.

Envision, a nonprofit in Wichita, Kan., that employs blind workers to make printer cartridges and air filters, said its sales had slumped in recent years.

Blind Industries and Services of Maryland, a Baltimore-based enterprise, used to rely on sales of paper to federal agencies to make up nearly one-third of its $9-million annual budget, said President Fred Puente.

“Now, with competition, it’s about one-half of 1% of our annual sales,” Puente said. “We had to move into other areas, such as cutting fabric for military and prison uniforms. Even there, we’re barely keeping our sales flat.”

Later this year, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is to review the federal legislation governing the contracts to assess how it’s being implemented -- and its efficiency. Part of the program’s problems, critics say, date to the 1970s when Congress expanded the law.

Renamed the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act -- all lawmakers who backed it -- it grouped blind workers with those with other severe disabilities, such as mental retardation, and Vietnam veterans who returned from war with missing limbs or brain damage.

The law has a set standard for who is blind -- even with correction, 20/200 vision in the best eye -- but not for other disabilities.

The program simply states that workers need to have a “severe physical or mental impairment,” one that so affects their ability to be employed that they can’t engage in the normal, competitive workplace.

As the years passed, what qualified as a “severe disability” changed as nonprofits, with a nod from federal regulators, expanded the definition. Some nonprofits selling their products under the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act say those with speech difficulties or drug addictions are severely disabled.

An investigation by the Oregonian newspaper recently found some nonprofit groups were hiring workers who were only mildly disabled or not disabled at all.

The paper reported that the program’s biggest contractor -- the National Center for the Employment of the Disabled in El Paso -- had pulled in more than $800 million in government sales, even though it couldn’t document most of its workers’ disabilities.

“Are there problems? Yes,” said Puente of Blind Industries and Services of Maryland. “We need changes, and it’s got to come from the government.”

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has asked to take part in the upcoming Senate committee hearing, describes the Chicago Lighthouse’s operation as a model program that accomplishes exactly what lawmakers intended.

Initially, Chicago Lighthouse earned a reputation as being a home away from home for the local blind community, a place where the sightless of all ages could come for counseling and job training.

Through the years, its workers have bundled together brooms, assembled science experiment kits for children and woven baskets.

“The idea for the clocks came about in the 1970s, when we were brainstorming for new products and new ideas,” said James M. Kesteloot, president and executive director. “We had to figure out ways to take away all eye-hand coordination, when building a clock is all about putting together pieces that are very small and exact.”

Last year alone, McCabe and 14 other blind workers at the Chicago Lighthouse pieced together more than 104,000 bold-numbered faces with tiny timers, which hang on the walls of each of the military branches, the Justice Department and the United States Postal Service.

“I ride three buses to get to work every morning, and I have for more than 26 years,” McCabe said. “This pays my bills and makes me feel great for having done such a good job for so long.”

On the assembly line on a recent morning, as the sound of carts groaning with the weight of boxed clocks filled the air, McCabe and fellow worker Albert Harris, 55, sat side by side and chatted cheerfully about the upcoming baseball season.

It takes the 10-person assembly team -- two of whom are blind and deaf -- less than a minute to build a clock. (Nearly all of the clockmakers are blind, though only 40% of all the Chicago Lighthouse workers are blind.)

In sync, each worker sifts through a small plastic box filled with clock motors and places them into a slot on the table. The motors are notched, so the workers can tell which direction they go.

Within seconds, they slide the clock’s plastic exterior into place, slip the clock face on, and tighten the motor with a quick twist of a motorized wrench. After lining up the minute and hour hands -- each marked with a tab to distinguish one from the other -- they send the finished product along the conveyor belt to be dusted, boxed and shipped.

By lunch, they had built nearly 175 clocks. Some are as small as a salad plate; others larger than a pizza platter.

“I’ve tried to apply for other jobs, and I always get told no,” said Harris, who has worked at the Chicago Lighthouse for 28 years. “Without this, I’d need far more financial help from the government.”

Indeed, a 2003 study by the National Industries for the Blind found that the federal government had saved more than $3,100 per person in reduced aid costs for every disabled worker employed in the program.

Said Obama: “Paying a small mark-up on clocks is not going to make a significant dent in the federal budget, but it will make a large difference to these workers in the long run.”