[Legal contract of workshops for handicapped people--a wish or reality?]

In August 1990, the "Werkstättenverordnung" (the Workshops for the disabled ordinance) has been in force for ten years. Concluding a lengthy historical development, it describes an utopia seeking to implement the opportunity for personal growth and for economically viable productive activity, even-handedly and concurrently, for all disabled people covered (excepting those with very severe disablement). In everyday practice, such notions are confronted with major obstacles: growing demand; poor transition into other employment, terminal workshop employment instead; problems with performance requirements, with the dependence from customers, and with remuneration issues; insufficient promotional services for learning disabled clients whose labour performance is essential to the workshops; adjustment problems of clients with mental illness within the workshop; counting of alternative service attendants toward the staffing plan; unsolved civil and labour law issues relative to contracts involving mentally retarded persons; protection against dismissal, clients' right to freely choose the workshop, their co-determination and the rights of their relatives; the need for special educational qualification of workshop and group senior staff who have to face up to the expectations and difficulties in the day-to-day running of the workshops.