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When 29-year-old Lee Watts climbs the steps at Abilities sheltered workshop he is transformed from a tall, dark man with a mental age of 5 to a worker. At the moment he is pulling plastic linings out of faulty Fonterra bags. It's physically demanding work and although he sometimes grumbles, his mother, Jane, explains "it's the only private thing he has in a life which is controlled by adults. It's his job, his pride, his own personal thing."
Lee's invalid's benefit ($217.38) is swallowed by his upkeep, but his $50 salary is his own to spend. Most goes on videos, but he's also saving for a league shirt and to have Sky installed in his room.
"If he's tired he sits down and has a little nod," says Jane. "His mates help him undo his drink bottle. He has the most lovely friends and his manager is absolutely wonderful. It's the only place in our society where he's truly accepted."
Chief executive Peter Fraher, who came here three years ago from heavy machinery supplier Gough Gough and Hamer, wanted to do his bit for society. His children were grown: "It was time to put something back."
Abilities, with its mandate to provide low-stress but meaningful work for the most vulnerable in our society, was perfect.
Although Fraher runs the non-profit society by supplementing income from the factory with top-up funding from the Ministry of Social Development, he wouldn't be able to do it without extra help. "This year we got $50,000 from the Self Help Trust and last year we got $50,000 from the ASB Trust." Abilities' 2005 surplus was $4000.
The thing that clouds Jane Watts' blue eyes, and keeps Fraher awake at night, is the thought that Lee, and his 86 mates at Abilities, might lose their jobs as a result of new legislation that will dismantle the fragile financial structure of the country's remaining sheltered workshops and put them at risk of closure.
The argument has been raging since 2001, when Disabilities Minister Ruth Dyson introduced "Pathways to Inclusion" - an ideologically driven strategy that contends that even the most intellectually disabled should be integrated into the wider community. They should also be paid the minimum wage.
Central to Dyson's plan is the repeal of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotions Act (DPEP) which currently covers sheltered workers under the Minimum Wage Exemption scheme, which means they are paid a minimal wage of between $50 and $150 a week plus the Invalids' Benefit, sick leave, statutory and annual holidays.
The repeal of the Act means minimum wage legislation will now include the intellectually handicapped who will only be allowed to opt out through individual exemptions issued by the Department of Labour.
This will almost certainly double Abilities' wage bill while incrementally increasing some workers' salaries and lowering others, depending on their ability to do the job.
Fraher insists the early philosophical stance of Pathways to Inclusion - driven by the physically disabled and adopted by politicians and in turn, IHC - was based on the premise that some sheltered workers were exploited.
"We were told that the Labour party supported a funded move out of workshops and into the new Community Participation scheme," he says. He is also convinced that Dyson and the Labour Department were against any form of exemptions, even for intellectually handicapped workers who could not meet normal work outputs. "In September 2004, Robin Semmens of the Department of Labour told us, 'Yes there will be minimum wage exemptions but don't rely on them - they won't be around for long'."
Dyson's bill was opposed by National, New Zealand First, Act and United Future. The Social Services select committee, 2005, highlighted serious concerns including:
* "Repeal of the DPEP Act will force sheltered workshops to close or move to providing other social services.
* Costs to sheltered workshop providers (employing 2000 people full-time), were estimated (to increase by) up to $5.58 million.
* "In addition to receiving government funding it is expected that workshops will be expected to offer real work and generate sufficient income to contribute to the cost of paying wages ... this new requirement to be commercial may overtake the need to be community-minded and to employ disabled people with high needs who need long-term, stable, employment."
The reaction was swift and severe. Today, 2000 disabled people, most of them from IHC, the Foundation of the Blind and several smaller workshops, have lost their jobs.
The strongest champion of the new strategy was IHC and its service arm, Idea Services, which quickly agreed with the Government line that the intellectually disabled needed more independence, control over their own lives and integration with the wider community. Today, their New Lynn centre is a showcase for the Pathways to Inclusion system.
Compared to Abilities with its unashamed work ethic, it is all very relaxed. One attendee, who keeps an eye on the parking area, points out my tyre is balding. Robbie, who is looking forward to tenpin bowling at the Special Olympics in Japan later this year, shows how he and his team of around five, test and clean metal kegs for the breweries.
A van rolls in with a supervised lawn-mowing team. Others work part-time, maybe a day or a few hours a week, at supermarket carparks or elsewhere.
Community Participation groups arrive from the local gym and library. There is excited talk of getting out into the community, being involved with other people. For many, the idea of collecting shopping carts holds more appeal than working at the centre. No one mentions that people on Community Participation don't get wages and also may have to pay for their outings.
IHC's Ralph Jones is fully supportive of government policy. Indeed, IHC Advocacy argues forcibly for the repeal of the DPEP Bill on the grounds that "the notion that a disabled worker is less productive than a non-disabled worker is questionable and perpetuates stereotypes about disability".
Since 2001, IHC has closed 260 sheltered workshops because, says Jones, they are "not meaningful by virtue of the fact that they don't pay wages or salaries for people who are in productive work".
Obviously Jones, whose organisation gets $168 million worth of government funding a year, feels he has little choice. A 2005 letter to Ann Armstrong of Nelson, who wrote to plead for work for her intellectually disabled son, puts his position clearly: "Has the IHC become too PC in some areas? Yes, by being a service provider we have bought into the government expectation, standards and policies. The $140 million [2005 figures] comes with a cost."
Says Armstrong, "I'm very disillusioned with IHC. They could have advocated more enthusiastically for people who haven't got a voice. They don't care about the money but they do like to be busy.
"There are degrees of handicap. Some go to work, have kids, but a lot more don't have any of that. They're the ones I care about and who I expect IHC to stick up for. I feel really sad when I remember Jason's weekly programme, compared to what he does now."
Jones on the other hand describes "supported employment", where people work in local businesses with support from an IHC employee "as full and proper employment".
Isn't this expensive? "No," says Jones who has been elected secretary general of Inclusions International. "The support's not there for every hour they're in employment. Sometimes it's minimal support, if any." What he doesn't mention is that much supported employment is part-time.
Watts is also scathing about the new strategy. "The idea's lovely but but the reality's absolute rubbish. You cannot put Lee in outside employment. He couldn't do it. No one would pay him $500-$600 a week. We tried to take him down to the supermarket and he scratched a car ... "
There's a groan and a yell from Lee: "I hate working there!"
"It's all right Lee, we won't take you back."
The reality of raising an intellectually disabled son in the community is tough. "We tried adopt-a-grandparent, she didn't come back.
"People round here didn't like the IHC bus calling for Lee when he was going to school. We had notes in the letterbox saying they hoped we'd be leaving when he was 15, 'because those people molest'."
As for Community Participation replacing work: "It's a waste of money. We do those things - take him to the library, swimming, bowling - on weekends. If the government wants to spend more money they should provide more caregivers at Abilities to help people get their shoes on, open their drink bottles. They could build a little gym there, or send taxis for Lee so we wouldn't have to struggle and worry so much about getting to work."
This from a woman whose daily routine is humbling. She gets up at 4.30am for a run before waking Lee at 6, then showering, shaving and dressing him for the day.
By 7 they are breakfasted, the lunches cut, and crawling through the traffic to North Harbour gym where Lee's programme is designed to stop his muscles seizing up. Thirty five minutes later Jane drops him at Abilities near Wairau Rd then carries on to Takapuna and her job as a parking warden. Most days she's a quarter of an hour late and she has to make up the time.
Now, after a five-year lead-in and the hard-won support of the House, Ruth Dyson's dream is near reality. And on the surface, her stance has softened. Despite the huge change she has brought to the sector, she is adamant: "If I wanted the sheltered workshops closed I would've closed them. But I don't. We've put substantially more money into them."
On the other hand she insists workshops must absorb the cost of at least the first round of payments. The workshops cannot be funded for salary increases. "I can see their problem," she says, "But I don't think it's going to be a problem. I can offer no more assurance than that."
Joy Ottaway, chief executive of the biggest sheltered workshop in the country, Workforce Auckland, is adamant the legislation is being implemented the wrong way. If it came into force after the Government's long-awaited Universal Benefit, it would all be much smoother. "We think the repeal of the Act definitely needs to happen, but please do the benefit review first."
Adds National's Disabilities spokesman, Paul Hutchison who has fought the repeal for years, "This is extremely bureaucratic and extremely impractical. The Government has to work out whether it's worth it. If you go and look at those 2000 who have lost their jobs some will be doing well, others'll be wallowing in front of TV."
Hutchison also suggests that IHC's eagerness to change from sheltered workshops to the Community Participation model - around $168.4 million a year - they tend to follow its edicts".
Fraher has taken Dyson's advice and started the process of exempting workers from minimum wage legislation to get an idea of next year's salary bill. The scheme involves individual exemptions, based on skill, which will mean eligible workers will be paid between $1.25 and $2.50 an hour.
Because there are not enough Labour Department inspectors, he must do the job himself.
"We have to have an advocate or parent there when we assess them, we have to do it over time, and then get it signed off ," says Fraher, who has already completed the paperwork to exempt six of his workers.
"We're going to make sure that everyone here is exempt before the Act's repealed. I've done six, I've got another 81 to go."
Ironically, while the workshops will be paying significantly more, most workers will be marginally better off at best, and the paper-shifting involved will quadruple. Why? Because their new salaries will push them over the point where their benefits are exempted - and they'll pay tax. The only real winner is the IRD, Fraher says.
"There's no point, other than a political philosophy. Staff get minuscule benefit and we could go broke."
By 4.30pm work is over. Often his father, who works two 12-hour shifts followed by two days off so he can help, picks Lee up from Abilities. They have a rest, tea, a walk round the block to keep those long legs from locking up.
On Mondays Jane takes him to touch rugby. They go swimming, to the library, the Puhoi pub. Yesterday they went tenpin bowling.
"We made a pact when we were 23 and 24 that we wouldn't put him into care," says Jane, her blue eyes showing not a flicker of self pity.
"We decided to have him at home - and for him to be the best he can be."
