What Business Model?

The other day a person who was cleaning our her office as we get to do some downsizing, or as the corporate wonks would call it right sizing,found a document that was from 1989. It listed salaries and rates of pay that our organization had developed. In 1989 we were paying the direct service staff at the most 8.69 dollars per hour to serve and support people who have a variety of very challenging needs. Dial the clock forward it is now 2010 and we are paying direct service staff at the high end of the scale, 10.00 per hour. By my calculation that means in 21 years we have given a 1.31 an hour raise to people dedicated to helping individuals to assit them in improving their qaulity of life. I ask you what other industry, profession or any type of employment for that matter would give their employees a 1.31 raise over 21 years? The answer is noone and nowhere.

The question is do we value the work that people do everyday in support of those who live with life challenges? The answer is no. If it were not the case, the people we serve would not have been locked away in institutions for so many years by a society that did want them as members. Now it seems we don't want those that provide direct services to amongst us either. How could they be living on these wages which don't quite gain you much beyond the crack in the door to our capitalist playground. In fact many direct service individuals qualify to recieve the govern benefits that those we serve do. Our staff and the individuals we serve for the most part, live in poverty and so the declared war continues.

We as leaders like to humor direct support staff by first calling them DSP's direct support professionals and yet we pay them lower wages than fastfood professionals. We honor them as we should, with a day, bumper stickers, a conference and then continue to pay them an unliveable wage. Even if we as executives took a 50% cut we could not pay direct support professionals a liveable wage, as our contracts with the funders has not increased very much at all for over fifteen years.

So what do we do? First tell the stories of great things that happen everyday for those we serve, and then let the media know who is making these great stories. We must be persistent and define what's really going on.

Spread the word this is an outrage.

JBG